My WP Works is the new home of The iAssistant. You’re in the right place!
I had heard of redirects before, but had never needed to learn about them before, so I didn’t.
But then I moved my blog from The iAssistant to this site, My WP Works. Not wanting to lose all my Google statistics, I visited Google Webmaster Tools to learn how to do it. What I learned was: I didn’t think I could do it.
The first thing I did was go to the cpanel of my webhost, HostGator, and looked around. I saw where to enter the information for the redirect, but when I pulled it up, I didn’t know what to put after the /. Everything I know about websites is self-taught, and there are many gaps in my education. LOL
After spending several hours over several days researching how to do a redirect, I stumbled upon this plugin: Simple 301 Redirects. With this plugin, and it is SO simple to use, you create a list of URLs to 301 redirect from one site to another. The plugin was written by Scott Nelle, and the one question I emailed him was answered almost immediately.
Once installed, I went to Settings/301 Redirects. It took a little time to enter the pages and posts, all 30 of them, but it was easier than figuring out how to do it like Google suggested. I figured out a copy and paste system with multiple tabs open, and after that it went pretty fast. The only one I had problems with was the home page, and that was what Scott solved in the email.
Take a look at this screenshot:
The highlighted line is how to do the home page. If you need a larger version, click on it.
I’m not sure what’s going on in my Google Analytics. I have tracking code installed on both The iAssistant and My WP Works. The stats for The iAssistant end the day I did the redirects, and the stats for My WP Works begin that day. I’m not sure how that ties in to Google and their page ranking system, so if anyone reading this knows, please leave a comment!
BTW, a canonical URL is your preferred URL. I just learned that!
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P.S. I have my Virtual Event Specialist certification through VA Classroom should you need a webinar, screencast, podcast, online tv, and/or online radio event recorded. Contact me here: Deborah at MyWPWorks dot com.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thank you so much for this blog. I was searching for ours how to make the 301 relink and with this plugin I only had to type the old and the new URL and it just works!!! Thanks for sharing,
Tatiana