Okay, I'm trying to figure this out, and I can't seem to find this because I've been looking around the forums for a while now....

Anyway, I was wondering if it's good to transfer a site hosted at trap17 to computinghost. I would like to transfer it at some point (it's not really a necessary thing at this exact point, because I'm not near using the space or bandwidth yet... I don't think anyway lol), and I wasn't sure if that would 'hurt' my site in anyway.

I'm thinking about transferring it, because I'd love to spend the time that I'm posting on these forums and instead be updating my site, and now that I have some money, I'm not too worried about paying the hosting fees to go along with it, but I'm a bit afraid of the transfer, because won't I lose most of my visitors if Google is looking for my old address and the site isn't there anymore?

And I know that there is a way to do redirects and things for sites, but will I still see a drop in the people trying to come to my site? And I read somewhere that Google penalizes sites with redirects or something (I'm such a newbie at all this stuff, that I really don't understand half of the stuff that I'm reading anyway).

I might just be paranoid about it all... but I've been working hard to get my traffic to increase so that I can finally earn some money off my site (which I am starting to now ) and I really don't want to see the efforts go 'down the drain' as I would say just to save a little time on the forums so that I can build up my site faster. I don't mind the forums at all, and I love posting here, but I'm just thinking that if my site keeps growing that eventually I'd have to transfer it over anyway, so should I be looking to transfer it over sooner rather than later?

Hmmm... has anyone done this before that can tell me there experiences with it, or how I should go about doing this sort of thing? (I know people have don't this sort of thing all the time, but I've never known what the outcome to be from it all).

Then again, maybe I'm just over thinking it all, and it's not the big deal that I think it is.... I hope that's the case anyway. Thanks for putting up with my rambling... and thanks for any light you might happen to shed on the questions I've asked

I personally have not transitioned from a sub-domain to a domain because I decided to start with a domain name.

But, if you are worried about dropping traffics, please consider the following: remain and retain your sub-domain for at least a year longer. In the mean time copy the exact format and database to your new domain and update only to your new domain.

Start advertising and promoting your new domain using your old sub-domain. Be sure that no new users are signing up (if any) to your old sub-domain but they are redirected to your new domain.

Close each topic/comment with a live link pointing to your new domain with the same topic/comment.

Use your Google Site Manage to request your old URL to be dropped and resubmit new sitemap. Google App's Site Manager is very good to propagate the new domain and protect any "ban" issue from Google SE.

Keep an eye on who is still visiting your old sub-domain (with IP visitor tool or OneStat like services) and when you no longer see any visitors, kill the old sub-domain. Keeping an eye includes any web crawlers, i.e. googlebot. Be sure to change content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" under your META tag to your old sub-domain.

Do not use redirect service from the start. When you have alerted all active members from old to new site you can then use the redirect service for a short time.

Okay, sorry that this is a very old thread, but it's my old thread, so I'm going to give it another go lol...

So I like the sounds of this... but I'm not quite sure how to go about implementing it correctly. To do this, should I just change the links on the pages to go to the new domain? I don't really have anything that's like topics/comments that I can close and redirect since it's not a forum, but rather just an information site. But I think that changing the links in the site to go to the new url should do the same sort of thing.




What happens if Google drops the old site, won't no one be able to find me anymore? I would think with a new URL I'd lose all my ranking, and it's the top rankings in the search engine that gives me my visitors. Or will google realize that it's the same site, and let me keep my rankings?

Anyway, sorry to bring this up again... but I had some extra questions when I was thinking about it again.

And if you look at my site, excuse the mess, it's undergoing a redesign so it's pretty bad right now, but after I'm finished that, I wanted to buy the paid service and get it switched over. Because it's probably better to switch it now, when there is less visitors, then to switch it later when I'm almost out of bandwidth, right? So if the hits do go down, it won't quite be so bad?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Thanks Buff,
I never thought of it that way. If I were to find myself in such a position I would just redirect anyone visiting the home page, copy the whole site to the new domain and design big banners for every page on the old site to tell visitors that I've moved. Little did I know that I'm so wrong.

Hi MidnightVamp,

To be honest mate the best way as BuffaloHelp said would just be to copy everything to your new domain and put ads on your old subdomain to allow everyone to know that you are changing sites,

But also if you have got such a big ranking on Google is this through your tags and other sites linking to you just aask them to put a link to your new domain...

Also because it will have all the same information as your old domain and more your page ranking will go up quicker and within a few short weeks a month maybe your new domain should be in the top Google rankings...

Also due to the fact that you will be changing to a TLD (top level domain) Google loves this fact even more than a subdomain (a bit bias in my opinion) although Google would tell you different...

If you need any more help on this you can PM me otherise I will try to start a Tut in the Design and Hosting Section

Regards

I recently did this, but it was much harder, since I did this with a forum. What I did was I just added the domain and transferred all the files. Along with updating my SQL (which if you just run a regular website, you won't have to do, it worked out great. I have now done better on search engines, and what is funny is my old subdomain is still high (and climbing) the search engine ranks. If you run a forum, I suggest doing what I did, but with a website, park the new domain until you get a steady flow of traffic. Another thing that may help you, which I did was re-submit to search engines, directories, and such. I wouldn't do it all at once, since search engines are skeptical if all of a sudden it sees your site all over the place (I read this on a SEO site), so do it bit by bit. Build up your backlinks steadily and you will be back where you were, but now with a professional domain.

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