301 Redirect without hosting - .htaccess

I have a client who is merging two sites into one. For the time being we are just installing a WP plugin to the site to manage the handful of 301 redirects they'd like handled, rather than writing to .htaccess manually.
But in a month or two they'd like to remove the site completely. Is there a way we can redirect traffic to the new combined site once they get rid of their hosting and we no longer have access to their .htaccess?
I have seen some brief mentions of setting the DNS to something but I don't totally understand and I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do. I have not asked the client if they are holding onto the domain name. In order to point the DNS to the new site, we'd need them to still own the old domain, correct? What would I assign the values to be?

You have to own the domain to do anything with it including updating DNS name. It wouldn't be smart to let it go.
If they don't have hosting on it anymore, then they will need to do domain forwarding with DNS. It can be done with 301 or 302 status codes. This link will show you how to do it on Godaddy. If you don't have Godaddy as your registrar, just look for the instructions for your domain registar.
https://www.godaddy.com/help/manually-forwarding-or-masking-your-domain-name-422

Related

How do I redirect OldSite.com to NewSite.com/Sub/NewPage

I need to redirect several URLs to a new site that will have pages that replace the old sites. I don't care if the URL is masked or not. I just need the URL's to go to the new pages on the new combined site.
For example:
Oldsite.com redirects to NewSite.com/Sub/NewPage
Oldsite2.com redirects to NewSite.com/Sub/NewPage2
Oldsite3.com redirects to NewSite.com/Sub/NewPage3
and so on.
I've tried domain forwarding on the DNS level, but that isn't working (likely because of the subdirectories).
Problem is the New site was developed in Webflow and I don't have access to implement custom code for redirects.
My thought is to host a separate site to act as a hub that handles all the custom redirects to the New webflow site.
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Your scenario here isn't entirely clear on the types of redirections you're attempting to do.
If you're trying to redirect all paths from the old site to a specific destination page, like this...
oldsite.com/* ➜ newsite.com/sub/newpage
...many modern DNS providers support that.
If yours does not, you can switch your nameservers to Cloudflare DNS free edition, and you'll have the ability to define up to 3 page rules that support wildcard redirections like this.

Point sub domain to root AND redirect main domain

I have
'website.com' and 'newwebsite.com', both on LAMP environment.
I need
website.com redirecting to newwebsite.com
AND
old.website.com pointing to root of website.com
I have full control of both hosting and DNS records.
I can't figure out the best solution without creating a loop !
There are two choices here: redirects, or DNS records. If you do it with redirects it means the user will see that they have been forwarded elsewhere. If you use DNS, the user will not be aware of the deprecation of the old websites.
For this reason, I would use HTTP redirects for this task.
If you wanted to go the DNS route then simply have an A record for newwebsite.com and CNAMES for the others that point to it.

Redirect subdomain on CloudFlare to Google Calendar

I want to redirect a subdomain of a domain I have on CloudFlare, to a Google Calendar (HTML/embed version).
I assumed I needed to use Page Rules to do this, which I have done by following CloudFlare’s documentation. However just following these instructions did not work for me. Apparently I need to add the subdomain to my DNS records on CloudFlare, but I don’t know how to set this up correctly since I have no server or IP to point it to (or I’m just confused as to why I need to even point it to something when I just want to forward a URL).
As mentioned I have no server to point it to – and thus can’t use a .htaccess solution – so don’t know what record type I should be using to use to just have the redirect working
I've had some success just using google.com as the CNAME record, then using a Page Rule to redirect everything on that domain. Because CloudFlare changes the DNS entry to its servers anyway (when you do the orange cloud thing) nobody will know.
I don't know if you could do that directly from cloudflare, but you can solve this using your hosting.
Point subdomain to your hosting server sub IN A 1.2.3.4 via cloudflare
Create sub.domain.com on you hosting
Place redirection script in index file in subdomain sub.domain.com document root:
<?php
header( "Location: http://docs.google.com/your-url-and-so-on" ) ;
?>
"subdomain to my DNS records on CloudFlare, but I don’t know how to set this up correctly since I have no server or IP to point it to"
This doesn't make much sense. A subdomain has to point to a record of some sort (A record or CNAME), so the subdomain wouldn't resolve without a record type of some sort. In order for a PageRule to work, two things have to happen:
The record has to be in your DNS settings.
The record has to have our proxy running over it.
It might be easier to figure out with the actual subdomain in question & what you're trying to forward to specifically.
So CloudFlare does support this through PageRules, you just need to get the URL correct.

Using DNS to Point a Domain to a Specific Page?

I know this question seems pretty straight-forward, but I'm having a hard time pulling up any answers on Google / Other Forums.
A client has a few domains parked on Network Solutions - not attached to any hosting account. I'm planning to point one of the recently purchased domains to a sub-directory of our main site (hosted elsewhere) - as part of a special promotion that's running.
However, Network Solutions now charges for Web Forwarding. In hopes of avoiding an additional charge I thought I'd use the DNS settings to point the IP to the site - but that just takes the user to the main website's home-page --- and not the specific sub-directory I need it to.
Since the domains are just parked - and not associated with a hosting account, I don't have access to a .htaccess file to deal with 301 forwarding or anything there.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Just point the DNS to your server and set up vhosts for each of the new domains. Then, drop in a one-line JS or PHP index file (or mod_rewrite rule) to redirect to the desired page on your main site.

Transferring Everything from One Domain to Another

I want to move from one domain to another one that is shorter and (hopefully) easier to remember, but I also want the transition to be as seamless as possible.
I'm a coder so I know about 301 redirects and I intend to use them, but is there something easier than manually adding entries in my .htaccess file?
The website is static with the exception of the blog, which is under the /blog/ directory and powered by WordPress. I want it redirected to my new domain name. File and folder structures don't change. Isn't there some kind of wildcard thing for this?
What type of web server is the site being hosted on? If its on Apache, you can use the RedirectMatch command
Why not leave the web site unchanged, and [temporailly] let the both the old and the new domains assume the IP of the site, at the level of DNS ?
In other words.
Let the DNS setup for the existing domain as-is (for now)
have the DNS of the new domain assingn the particular server name to the IP of the web server (or preferablly to a 2nd IP, also assigned to this very site).
In a few months / whenever the old domain is soon to expire, check what residual traffic may still be using the old domain name (Old IP), and for them only, add a small piece of text somewhere in the UI to inform them of the new domain.

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