301 Redirect is considered as a permanent redirect compared to a 302 redirect which is temporary. Therefore when moving wordpress to a new domain, it is a good idea to redirect all the posts to the new domain.
This way all the search engine records will be kept intact and this means you won’t lose any traffics / hits to the website.
This doesn’t mean redirecting from nishv.com to fnode.com, it will also redirect every single URL associated with nishv.com to fnode.com.
For instance, if a user is looking for a particular post and goes to nishv.com, they will be redirected to the corresponding post on fnode.com
Here is an example of one of the most popular post on the site…
http://www.nishv.com/2007/06/02/make-bisoncam-work-on-windows-vista/
When users clicks on the above link, they will be automatically redirect to
http://www.fnode.com/2007/06/02/make-bisoncam-work-on-windows-vista/
This way, the user won’t notice the domain change because it is 99% directed via search engine or linked URL.
This method is also a good way to let GoogleBot to know that the domain has been moved permanently from nishv.com to fnode.com
Here is the code below and I used which goes into the .htaccess file. All you got to do is to replace the URL to make it work with your own domain.
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.nishv.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.fnode.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# END WordPress
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Where do I put the code exactly?
I’m moving http://blog.photographythoughts.com
to
http://photographythoughts.wordpress.com
The permalinks structure is kept intact. At this moment I’ve made a change to the singe post file as follows:
But this only forwards to the main page.
Sorry the code didn’t came along with the previous comment:
” ”
Hope this works.
Nish,
What if I want to 301 posts from one wordpress domain to another domain with a different permalink structure?
@John
You need to do that on .htaccess file… You will only get access to that file if you host your own blog.
Thanks a lot, this piece of code was a life savior. I’ve spent the last two days trying to accomplish this redirect with no success at all. Now it works like a charm.
Glad to hear it!
Thanks buddy, that helped me make a smooth domain transition!
First of all congratulation for such a great site. I learned a lot reading here today. I will make sure i visit this site more often so I can learn more.
this is what I’m looking for.
I tried it and it works in a snap 
Thank you so much ^_^
i am trying to redirect my site on wordpress.com e.g XXXX.wordpress.com to my self hosted blog. now there is no way i can alter wordpress.com blog. Please help me
You can’t do it, you need to have access / .htaccess…
Hi Nish
Amazing post..Thanks a lot..Where do I post these 5 lines of code?
Also, will this help in retaining all the in-links that I have built for my older site?
Anand, You should be able to retain everything and it will be a seemless transformation for the users… All info goes into the .htaccess file.
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