Wordpress - Just switching domains?
 

WP Guru's,

I opened a thread last week and received some very helpful replies in it.. but I feel that I did a poor job describing the issue and what I was after so I just want to make sure to clarify.. and again for all those whom answered I am greatly appreciative of your time and expertise.

I have just updated a friends site to wordpress. He was doubtful so we used a different domain so he could see the final product before agreeing to use it. His old domain is aged and ranks well (www.hellohello.com), it's a non wordpress site hosted on yahoo.

So I then built him a new Wordpress site on (www.hello-hello.com) with a more "wordpress friendly" hosting, Host Gator. Yahoo only allows an old out-dated version of WP in their weirdo package deal.

The new Wordpress site with a hyphen is already showing some decent rankings. So here is my question:

What is the most simple and easy way to essentially "switch" the domains. He would like his old domain (non wordpress site with different hosting) on the new Wordpress site (better hosting).

Is there a way to do this without transferring the site completely? I realize there is the Site Duplicator wordpress plugin.. but again we want to use the new wp friendly hosting and not his old hosting.. it wouldn't make sense to go install wordpress on his old hosting and transfer the site to them because they use an out-dated version of Wordpress. (some weirdo package deal with yahoo and the service is only configured to use like wordpress 2.8 or something, yes it's strange).

We also want to use the old domain because it's 14 years old. He realizes we might lose some rankings for a bit and that's ok. But I'm really looking for a simple fool-proof solution to get his old domain over to the new setup. If it were only possible to essentially "switch" the domains without any site transfers that would be ideal.

I know we could do a domain forward from hellohello.com to hello-hello.com but what I worry about is how that will effect not only the old domains seo, but the new site's promising seo (he's already seen returns). The last thing I would want is for somehow for Google to think something weird is going on with the domain forward and the new domain get penalized for whatever reason.

His backlinks are also aligned only on the old domain. I realize he is going to take a SEO hit simply because we are getting rid of the old site and it's exact content and pages, etc. But I'm confident with the aged domain and backlinks, his new wordpress site would be just fine in the long run.

Question is how do I use his old domain on the new site?

Any help would be SERIOUSLY appreciated from your WP fellows. I hit Fris up through Oatmeal and am awaiting a response, but any helpful info it all would still be very welcome indeed.

301 redirect would work, no?

I'm not sure.. looking into it now.

I'm a dumb shit when it comes to technical stuff.. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend and craftsman who's site desperately needed a revamp.

How does a "non-technical" person exist in adult? He buys traffic and micro-tweaks landing pages for a living.. lol.

But thank you, checking it out now.

http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

a bit of info about the different types of redirection.

you would do a 301

Why the domain needs to be switched in the first place? Does Yahoo own it or something? Just point the domain to new server and that's it. In short: updating NS-information.

Thanks for the help fellas, truly. 301 it is :)

Much appreciation Fris.. and hats off to ya Damian.

As per this question.. no yahoo doesn't own the domain.. the old hellohello.com is regged at yahoo (it's 14 years old).

But how does changing the Nameservers put the content of the new site hello-hello.com on it?

I don't quite undestand the question, but if you want to use the old domain without changing to new one, that's no problem. You just need to configure nameservers on the server and then using your domain registrar's "control panel" (like Godaddy's, Namecheap, etc.) to point whatever domain you have in possession to the server that has the actual content for the website. Now you probably have Yahoos nameservers for the old domain, so you just update the nameserver information to match your new hosting/ server.

I've never heard of that in my life?

I'm no technical genius, but I don't think just simply changing the nameservers of the old domain to the same nameservers of the new domain will do anything except allow me to make edits to old domain or put a page on it it from the new host.

I meant changing the nameservers of the old hosting to match new hosting. Maybe I understood this all wrong, but I clarify my point, maybe it goes in vain, maybe not.

a) Domain points to Yahoo's nameservers, like ns1.yahoo.com and going to Yoursite.com shows the stuff that you have on Yahoo's servers.

b) When changing to new host you point the domain to ns1.newhost.com and going to your website shows the content that is stored on the new hosting provider.

So, the hosting provider changes, domain doesn't.

Unless I'm missing something that should be pretty straight forward.
Setup new hosting for hellohello.com
Create new mysql database on hellohello.com
Copy every file via FTP as is from hello-hello.com onto hellohello.com
Export database using phpmyadmin from hello-hello.com
Edit wp-config file copied from hello-hello.com for new database, user and password
Make sure wp table prefix on hellohello.com is same as hello-hello.com
Go into phpmyadmin for hellohello.com and import the database you exported earlier.

Straight forward perhaps,

but again I'm a bit thick with the technical side of things.. I was looking for the easiest way possible to get this done.. and a way that wouldn't effect the existing SEO too harshly.

A 301 redirect sounds ideal for my needs.. now I just need to figure if I should only re-direct to the base page of the new site or try to match up all the individual sub pages to have better redirect relevance for surfers clicking his old "well indexed" links in google.

The name server method mentioned above sounds the easiest for my retarded ass.. but I've never heard of that working in my life.. admittedly, I've never heard about a lot of things though.

But thank you for your help.. if I wasn't technically challenged I might give it a go.

Thanks to everyone else for their helpful incites as well.. it is greatly appreciated, running into shit you don't know is extremely frustrating.. next time I will be a bit more hesitant to help.

I don't mind building someone a nice wordpress site as that is within my skillset.. but site transfers and having to consider the seo and backlinks of the old site is just a pain in the ass I don't need.

It's really not that hard. If you can't figure it out, pay someone on fiverr to do it for you.

I'm sure it isn't for people who have done anything of that sort before.

But I do all my installs with wp "one click" installs, and never do anything on the ftp side of things except for the very basic stuff.

Never messed with .htaccess before or even the wp-config.

Fiverr would be great.. looking into it now.

Just update the nameservers, so no link juice is wasted and the customer gets the old domain he wants. Usually the hosting providers include their nameservers in the "welcome" email or on their website. So, just login to the domain registrar's site and update the nameservers. If you don't know how, see their "help file".

After you have pointed the old domain to the new host, you should redirect the new hello-hello to the old domain (do this too on the registrar's site) to avoid duplicate content penalty, that might already happen, if you serve the same content on different domains.