Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?

[SamTurri]

Howdy.

I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway!

Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched.

We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately.

Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com?

Thanks!

[MarkFasel51]

If I am understanding correctly you want people to access DomainA.com when they go to DomainB.com? If this is the case, you could set up DomainB.com as a Domain Forward to DomainA.com.

For instance a Client I have right now has www.drcharlescrane.com and www.drcharlescrane.net. Hosting is only set up for .com and we domain forward .net.

You can also have this set up as a domain forwarding with mask so if you wanted the user would actually see in the URL domainb.com but pulling domaina.com's content.

I hope this makes sense and if you need further clarification let me know. Also where is your domain registered. I use Godaddy primarily to the low costs for domains. Here is a how to domain forward provided by them and more information on the topic - http://help.godaddy.com/article/422

[AlanMosley]

DNS, resolves a name to a ip number,

that ip number should route to your website. Inthe headers of the resquest is the domain name, your web site should be configured to accept either all requests on a ip number and port or filtered by host headers (domains names), add all teh host headers needed, then in htaccess 30 to the pirmary domain name.

[SamTurri]

Thank you Alan. Are you suggesting that via DNS records I have DomainA.com "live" in the same place as DomainB.com, and then host the .htaccess on DomainB.com's hosting space?

So somebody requests DomainA.com, the DNS points to the hosting for DomainB.com, and then the .htaccess for DomainB.com can process the original DomainA.com request?

[SamTurri]

Thanks, but does this help with 301s for inner pages?

[sesertin]

I had just the same experience. It was only one occasion but I did nothing more to the site then putting it under a new account on my shared hosting, so only the last digit of the ip has changed. I saw a drop in rankings however the original I gained back the original rankings a few weeks later.

[AlanMosley]

I cant say it does, but when I changed ips i had a drop in rankings. But i cant prove it was the change in ip
but there is some logic to it,
A domain name is resolved to a ip address to find the website, the domain name is sent in the header. Your web site accepts a connection on a socket, ip number and port 123.123.123.123:80, it then looks in the header for the domain name
so a SE will see a difference, it will know this is not the same address

[PPCnSEO]

100% disagree.

Most of the biggest websites in the world use DNS load balancing which will change the IP address of the server every request.

301 redirects lose a small amount of juice but IP changes don't.

Hosting changes don't (assuming no errors or outages).

Who-is changes do, but that is not relevant here.

[AlanMosley]

1. you need to make a change to your DNS settings.

where every you registered your domain, you ned to change your Arecord to point at the correct ip number

2. you need to do a 301 redirect to primary domain.

[waqid]

If you have Cpanel here are the instructions. For godaddy or plesk call your host and tell them what you are trying to do.

Log into where you purchased domain A and forward it to the name servers at B's hosting. Then go into B Cpanel and click on add on domains. Add your domain. Once the domain has been added go to domain redirects and redirect your old domain to new.

For type choose permanent 301

Choose the domain you want to redirect from the drop down. Next manually type in your new domain name where it says "redirects to".

[waqid]

I think I disagree as moving site A's hosting to a new ip causes a drop in rankings.

Never heard about this before. I think this is not true, i have chagned IP's in the past without any consequences.

[N5c]

You shouldn't have to continue to pay for hosting for the site you are getting rid of, just keep renewing the domain name and then 301 it to the new site and you should be fine.

[SamTurri]

Thank you. I'm actually not understanding. How do I Park A on B. What is "explicit .htaccess"?

[EGOL]

There is no penalty or loss for changing an IP address. There are many legitimat reasons for doing that. IP changes often occr when your host moves your site to a different server, or, when you upgrade your hosting package, or move to a different hosting service. No worries at all about new IPs.

[cfguti]

The .htaccess that have the information about the A domain is inside B hosting, so, you don't need anymore A hosting when you do all the redirections.

I think this post can help:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067216/The-10-Step-Site-Migration-Process

bye

[sesertin]

Egol has usually got great answers that woths linstening to, this time however I think I disagree as moving site A's hosting to a new ip causes a drop in rankings. Put the redirection on top of that and you get some more fallback. I think in the above case I would not change the hosting but do the redirect and wait for google to notice the change. Maybe a few months later I would give up site A's original hosting and migrate it to site B's hosting to be able to keep the original urls live for some more time.

[EGOL]

Park A on B and redirect with explicit .htaccess.