Changing my domain name....help! [Archive]

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StateDOG

07-10-2002, 12:56 PM

I have a message board where the name is pretty specific to the content (which is good) http://northmisssports.com. It focuses on sports in North Mississippi. But, now I'm thinking I want to expand the scope of the board to include the whole state. Well, I can't have it called www.northmisssports.com if it isn't just for the north. It would limit the interest of the central and southern schools/fans, I think.

So....

What is the best way to go about it? I know I can just change my domain name to my new one with my hosting company and all will be good. But what about people who are already used to using the current URL? How can I set it up to where it will redirect all visitors to the new one? Do I have to have two completely seperate hosting plans for this? What are my best options?

StateDOG

phatronic

07-10-2002, 01:09 PM

Save this as HTML and make it as your index in the default site, it will head your visitors to the new site :

======================

<html>
<head>
<title>Your Site Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;URL=http://domain.com">
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div align="center">
 
 
 
http://northmisssports.com
has morphed into http://domain.com 
You will be directed there in 3 seconds
</div>
</body>
</html>

============================
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;URL=http://domain.com">
- Change "3 to the number of seconds you want
- Change URL=http://domain.com"> to the targeted domain name

Wazeh

07-10-2002, 01:22 PM

You can either park the new domain on top of the old domainl or set it up to forward the old requests to the new domain. It's very easy to do. You just have to contact your host and tell them what you need and they should be able to do it in less than a minute.

FNM

07-10-2002, 02:14 PM

Parking it would certainly be a better idea than using meta tags to forward imo.

StateDOG

07-10-2002, 02:18 PM

FNM - Can you explain "parking" it a little bit better please? Would I park it with the domain registrar or with my current host or different host? Is there a charge for parking?

I asked about the pointer, and they replied that they can try it, but they've had a difficult time trying to do that for another customer in the past. Had some problems and what not.

That got me to wondering if I tried to move the current URL to a really really cheap hosting plan where all it did was forward visitors to my new URL.

Is that a good solution?

Wazeh

07-10-2002, 02:39 PM

No need to purchase another plan. Your host can do it with a simple configuration in the apache config file (or from the control panel if they have one). Some hosts will charge you to do this, others won't. Try to ask your host and see what they charge.

StateDOG

07-10-2002, 04:38 PM

For some reason my host balks at doing the pointer (should this tell me something about my host?) They said they tried it before with a different customer but ran into some problems with it.

But I discovered that if I let Namecheap, my registrar, handle it, they let me set the URL to redirect. So, I can register for my new sitename, get my files set up on it, then change the DNS for the former domain name back to NameCheap, and get it to point to the new one.

That should work fine, right? Please tell me that works.

StateDOG