New website, but, how to redirect old links to new ones?

Server Config
1

We are going to redesign a website that is indexed in Google and don’t want to loose this.
Is there a way to redirect from old links to new ones besides doing it one by one inside an Apache config file?

Thanks.

2

If there’s some pattern that relates the old and new links which can be expressed as a regular expression, then you can use that instead of having one rule per file.

The best thing to do to preserve your rank and to preserve the structure of the web is to not change URLs every time you redesign a site. You don’t have to.

3

Yes, thanks, but the problem is that we are moving from a static HTML website to a CMS one, so there is no pattern to follow.

4

:nono: In that case, you’re pretty much SOL. :sick::sick::sick: PPPPPP (Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance)!

Without the PP, you’re pretty much stuck either losing all your original links (and page rank) OR creating a “map” from ALL the old links to the new links. With this “map,” you’ll have a choice between a long series of Redirect statements (which is an AWFUL thing for Apache to go through for EVERY FILE REQUEST) or creating a RewriteMap (you MUST have access to httpd.conf to set this up but it can be read ONCE - on Apache start - and the Redirect given to each old link).

Regards,

DK

5

If you can’t set the link structure in that CMS, then it’s a poor CMS.

With WordPress you could set the permalinks of your pages to be exactly the same as they are now, including .html extensions.

I’ve replaced decade old static sites with WordPress without changing a single URL. URLs are supposed to be permanent.

6

Good idea on the permalinks, and I think that Drupal can do that. Thanks.

7

Do a permanent 301 redirect in your HTACCESS to reflect your new domain.

8

The domain is the same, most of the links are going to change because of the reorganization of the website.

9

Still, if say all your images went from folder1 to folder2/newfolder you can use Redirect for that as well. At least see where you can use redirect instead of rewrite or something else. It’s faster and tells the SE’s to update their links.