Domain Redirect

  • Unknown's avatar
    katelynmf · Member ·

    Something has gone horribly awry with my domain. Old posts that were shared on social media are no longer being re-directed. All I did was drop the “wordpress” portion for the new domain! It was working for the first few hours, but now it isn’t and is instead going to an error page. Ideally I’d like anywhere that my old katelynmf.wordpress.com(with blog title) link was to redirect to the new katelynmf.com(with blog ttle) link. Is this not possible? Does this even make sense? :) The new domain works great, I just hate that any links myself or other people had posted to old entries before the domain change are now broken links.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    alexjgustafson · Member ·

    Hi Katelyn,

    Sorry for the troubles and thanks for posting the issue. This is expected whenever a domain name is changed. When you share a link on social media, the permalink for that share is saved for the post. For instance, your post on September 2nd was saved at this address:

    http://katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/the-residual-effects-of-being-in-the-top-eight-generation/

    Once you change your domain name, your WordPress blog knows how to update all the addresses, and does that so your readers don’t think they’ve moved to another site with an old address. So it updated that address to:

    http://katelynmf.com/2014/09/02/the-residual-effects-of-being-in-the-top-eight-generation/

    The problem is, the social media post saved that first address, and continues to point there and doesn’t know to point to the new one. While the domain name switch seems simple to our eyes, from a technical standpoint they’re two completely different addresses.

    We do offer a Site Redirect upgrade that will fix this problem, if you’d like:

    Redirect a WordPress.com Site Address

    Otherwise, those old links will remain broken while you use the new domain name.

    Let me know if that makes sense or if I can further clarify.

    Best,

    -Alex G.

    Happiness Engineer | WordPress.com

  • Unknown's avatar
    katelynmf · Member ·

    Alex,

    Thank you SO much for this response! It makes total sense- I think I just got hung up on the idea that an automatic redirect would magically take place for anything and everything I’ve ever posted with a link to my blog. I’m letting go of that fantasy now!

    I was wondering if you could help me with something else though. I’ve ended up with seemingly two blogs in this.

    Under My Sites I have two blogs named In Between Pancakes. One at katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com and one at katelynmf.wordpress.com. The katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com one redirects to katelynmf.com where my actual active blog is, whereas katelynmf.wordpress.com is basically a fancy error page!

    Ideally I’d like to just pretend this katiemfschmidt thing never happened(it was a self branding idea that I’ve given up on!). I’d prefer to just have katelynmf.wordpress.com which redirects to katelynmf.com and my actual In Between Pancakes blog. But I can’t figure out how make that katiemfschmidt a thing of the past(and I’m terrified that if I succeed, I’ll actually end up deleting all my posts since that’s seemingly where they are right now rather than on katelynmf.wordpress)

    I hope THAT made some form of sense. Sorry there’s so many links and long ones at that!

    Thanks for your help!

  • Unknown's avatar
    alexjgustafson · Member ·

    Hey Katelyn!

    So the first thing to think about is that since you have katelynmf.com registered, no one actually sees your katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com anymore (other than you.) I can help you do all the transfers and stuff if you want, but after all is said and done — your readers will be looking at the exact same thing: katelynmf.com. So just know it’s kind of going through trouble for not much gain.

    But if you really feel like you need the closure on an experiment, here’s what we can do:

    1. Export all of your content out of katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com
    2. Import all of that content to katelynmf.wordpress.com
    3. I’ll transfer the domain katelynmf.com to be associated with the katelynmf.wordpress.com account
    4. You can forget about the katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com blog forever

    The biggest thing that’s tough about this method is how to handle your media because the export doesn’t take care of that. You can do either of the following:

    1. Leave the blog katiemfschmidt.wordpress.com running with all that media there so that the posts/pages under katelynmf.wordpress.com work smoothly
    2. Manually upload the images to katelynmf.wordpress.com and re-insert the images to pages and posts there.

    So let me know what you’d like to do and I’m happy to help either way. :)

    Best,

    -Alex G.

    Happiness Engineer | WordPress.com

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