Change name of directory
-
How can I best change the name of a directory on my website (example: http://www.website.com/nameofdirectory/)?
The directory has lots of content included in it which has links from all over my website. I guess I have to adjust those links? How do I easily collect all of the links?
Which is the code I should use in my htacces?
Thank you!
With kind regards,
Dieter -
A 301 is the code returned by your web server, along with the address of the new page. htaccess (mod_rewrite) is the most powerful tool to do this because it uses regular expressions to filter (which, consequently, also makes it more difficult to use).
You don't have to use htaccess, however. Virtually all server-side programming languages (like PHP, .NET, Ruby on Rails, etc) support telling Apache what headers to return. Here's a PHP example
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://www.newsite.com");
exit(); -
You can use a text editor like Notepad++ for it.
-
Is there a software I should use for "Search & Replace"?
-
Download the website and do a search and replace for nameofdirectory to new****nameofdirectory. That should take care of it. Along with that put a 301 in place for any external links going to nameofdirectory. You should be good.
-
I just dont see how I can add a 301 redirect to a page. I thought I could only add it in .htaccess?
How about the pages on my website that link to the old directory?
-
The website itself is static but the directory is a CMS. What would be the best option then?
-
The same principle applies to all rewrites. You can rewrite one page, an entire directory or even your whole site. htaccess is one of Apache's best features and that's why every web server out there offers some version of it.
If I'm still not answering your question then please supply some more details and I can go more in depth.
-
Is your website static or uses some sort of a CMS ? It might be possible to do a search and replace for nameofdirectory or newnameofdirectory and that should work. I would also recommend doing a directory level 301 redirect via .htaccess that will redirect http://www.website.com/nameofdirectory/* to http://www.website.com/new****nameofdirectory/*
//301 Redirect Entire Directory RedirectMatch 301 /nameofdirectory(.*) /newnameofdirectory/$1
-
@ Highland: It is not a page, it is a directory.
-
You need to add a 301 redirect to your new page. This will send a command to your browser (and any bots) to go to the new page. This page describes how to modify your htaccess file.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I "undo" or remove a Google Search Console change of address?
I have a client that set a change of address in Google Search Console where they informed Google that their preferred domain was a subdomain, and now they want Google to also consider their base domain (without the change of address). How do I get the change of address in Google search console removed?
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Should I change by URL's
I started with a static website and then moved to Wordpress. At the time I had a few hundred pages and wanted to keep the same URL structure so I use a plugin that adds .html to every page. Should I change the structure to a more common URL structure and do 301 directs from the .html page to the regular page?
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Changing our homepage - what to bear in mind?
We're going to refresh our homepage by putting more content on it and a slightly different design. Given that it's our highest authority page, I don't want to screw it up. We're going to keep the titles / meta / copy the same during the transition, is there anything else I should bear in mind to avoid it plummeting down the rankings? I ask as we have a 2nd smaller site and when I changed 1 word in the title of the homepage it lost 40 places on half its keywords. Lesson learned... Thanks in advance for any tips Dan
Technical SEO | | danfk0 -
Change in how Google displays SERPs
Hi All, Recently our SERPs have changed in Google results to show product prices from our pages rather than the meta description. This just started to happen in November with no change (that we know of) on our side. I have attached a from and to SERP image if that helps. Does any one have any ideas as its starting to effect our rankings? Thanks, Tony. Tkeou,6jg6Q Tkeou,6jg6Q#1
Technical SEO | | tstauntonwri0 -
Changing the URL structure will it help me or hurt me?
I got handed a website running on Joomla without the SEO friendly URL check box selected so our URLs all look like this www.rotaryvalve.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=37 . I am hoping to rework this website in the near future here and plan on changing the URL structure across the website so there are some actual keywords in the URL. When I did this I was thinking of just doing 301 redirects to the new pages and hopefully the hit from the search engines wouldn't be too bad. Can anyone speak from experience as to what the best way to go about doing this would be so I don't end up falling back ranking wise. Would change the URLs end up helping me or hurting me? Thanks
Technical SEO | | wmwmeyer0 -
Site description on Google has changed to a very outdated description
When I googled my top keyword today, my site on google showed a description of my site from YEARS ago. It is completely irrevelant and misleading to visitors. Why would this have happened and is there anything I can do about it? Thanks!!! Betsy
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Multiple title and description change is considered spam?
I'm changing title and description several times throught 1-2 months... will Google penalize me? I'm worried that testing several title and description ideas would affect the site rankings on google. Anyone had a problem with that... or can i continue testing as many titles and descriptions as i want?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0