Redirect old pages to new?

[CasinoDefence]

Hi

I have acquired some affiliate sites recently and a couple are in desperate need of a makeover but have a question about redirecting the old pages to new ones.

So as an example... the current site uses static html pages (.html) where as the new design site which uses WordPress has the standard /pagename/

So would I set up a 301 permanent redirect on all 170 pages via a .htaccess file?

h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/32red.html >>> h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/32red/
h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/coral.html >>> h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/coral/

170 redirects would take a lot of time so was wondering if there was a easier way? The site has good Google SERPS so would be shame to lose any of the existing SEO juice!

[universal4]

Here is an example at stack exchange
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...all-html-files

There are a few threads on that here, I recall one in the last week or so that had an example in also.

Rick
Universal4

[ddm]

1 way to do this:

1. store the 170 urls in a csv file, and their desired new destination
2. edit your 404.php template
3. make it parse the CSV, and 301 to new url if requested url == one of the urls in your list, otherwise continue as normal.


no huge overhead like loading a zillion URIs into a .htaccess file

[Juicer]

Would take a whooping 30 mins to do 170 URL redirects using a redirection plugin, is that a lot of time?

[baldidiot]

Would take a whooping 30 mins to do 170 URL redirects using a redirection plugin, is that a lot of time?

Should be easy enough to do in htaccess but if you'd rather use a redirection plug in it's also pretty simple. Most of the ones I've seen have the option to do a csv upload, no need to add redirects one by one.

Alternatively some also allow regex redirects as well so you could just do a general .html to / rule.

[ddm]

considerations:
170 rw rules in htaccess = bad for performance
regex or a rewrite rule may not be viable b/c these seem to be root pages - might trigger in spots it doesn't need to.

[citizen42]

If you want to make the redirects, it wouldn't be170 lines in .htaccess, you use one directive for all URLs ending in .html
The link @universal4 provided explains how.


Another option to consider.
I've seen some websites using WordPress and page URLs ending in .php or .html

Perhaps, you can do the same and avoid redirects.
If you're using posts for those static pages, you need to use /%postname%.html/ in permalinks and that should do it.

If you decide to do so, just do a little tests with category, page URLs.

Hi

I have acquired some affiliate sites recently and a couple are in desperate need of a makeover but have a question about redirecting the old pages to new ones.

So as an example... the current site uses static html pages (.html) where as the new design site which uses WordPress has the standard /pagename/

So would I set up a 301 permanent redirect on all 170 pages via a .htaccess file?

h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/32red.html >>> h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/32red/
h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/coral.html >>> h--p://www.testdomain.co.uk/coral/

170 redirects would take a lot of time so was wondering if there was a easier way? The site has good Google SERPS so would be shame to lose any of the existing SEO juice!

[universal4]

Why use a plugin to do what htaccess or web.config or even manually in cpanel will do?

Those 3 methods are directives processed by the server at the beginning of any page calls. Plugin redirects are processed as the site is loading and require additional database calls, thus making the plugin type slower.

If you are redirecting ALL pages.html pages to /pages/ one thing to remember to consider is if you had visit links that were also .html

At that point I think I would consider changing those all to visit/pages.php otherwise they could get trapped into most of the above suggestions.

There are a number of plugins you can use to help with search and replace if your visit links are hard coded into pages, but I have used these methods and plan on doing so in the coming weeks with a few sites that will be changed over from html to wordpress.

Rick
Universal4

[Toomek]

Completely agree. Don't use plugins for whatever you can do by yourself

[Jumpmanbingosites.uk]

Read plenty of guidea and articles and be careful how to proceed.

[saicharan]

can you explain in detail how to redirect in word press?

[universal4]

As others have stated above, in most cases for most webmasters, they will want to do the redirects in htaccess.

If you absolutely have to use a plugin, there are a number of them available, some write to the htaccess, and if so manually adding them is better rather then adding yet another plugin.

If you look at the stackoverflow example I linked to above, and your wordpress pages followed the same naming convention, the majority would be dome with one rule.

Rick
Universal4

[gil.langelaan]

You should use htaccess rule to 301 all .html pages to new pages.

[Jason.F]

301 - plugins prettylinks, 404 to home page