If I add a 2nd custom domain and make it primary what happens to old links in?
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My site currently has custom primary domain JanasJournal.com and that’s what shows in page urls. As I complete the transition of moving my external website content to this site and making it a blended portfolio website and blog I will add my old website’s domain name JanaBouc.com to this site.
This site was originally named for my blog (JanasJournal), which isn’t right for the art portfolio portion which should just be JanaBouc.com/portfolio, etc.
If I change the primary domain to JanaBouc.com will it change the URLs of all pre-existing posts and pages. If so, will all links from the outside (including Google searches and other web mojo) be broken? What about internal links where I’ve linked to another one of my blog posts?
If so, do you have any suggestions for workarounds? Sub-domains? Or just send people to JanaBouc.com and don’t worry about what URL appears in the URL window?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Jana,
As long as you keep both of your domains active, the links will work for both of those domains. So if you have domain1.com and domain2.com, then any links which are created for domain2.com (say, for example, domain2.com/this_is_my_favourite_picture.jpg) will work with domain1.com as well (domain1.com/this_is_my_favourite_picture.jpg comes up too). That’s how our domain mapping works.
Keep in mind however that this means that all content on domain1.com and domain2.com will be identical. There will be no way to send visitors to different information between the two. As long as you’re OK with that, then you’re going to be fine. If you wanted to split the two up, then it’s a totally different conversation that we would need to have!
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I’d love to have that conversation:
Is there a way to split them up? Can JanasJournal point only to the blog and Janabouc.com point to everything else?I bet not.
Also to clarify, are you saying that if/when I add JanaBouc.com and set it as the primary domain the following will be true:
1) All URLs will have JanaBouc.com as the root and will look like “JanaBouc.com/blog” or “JanaBouc.com/Portfolio/Picture.jpg” etc.
and
2) any old links coming in from Google or other websites like this: “JanasJournal.com/great_picture.jpg” will still be linked and found (and still have their same SEO value) even though the URL is now “JanaBouc.com/great_picture.jpg”?If so, this is great news!
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To answer your first question, while you are using just the one blog, no that is not possible. You would have to maintain two discreet blogs in order to have different domain names do different things within our system. Sorry!
For point 1, if you previously had janasjournal.com/blog and janasjournal.com/portfolio/picture.jpg; then when this change is made, everything will be updated so that while those two previous URLs still work, but when you type them into your address bar, they will automatically switch over to janabouc.com/blog or janabouc.com/portfolio/picture.com. It’s just like now when you type in janabouc.wordpress.com/blog. The “janabouc.wordpress.com” part gets rewritten to the correct primary domain. Does that make sense?
And for point 2, yes, all other sites will still be able to find the content at the same location, etc. SEO . . . I cannot in any way make a guarantee when it comes to that. There are entire industries which are dedicated to search engine optimization, and I am by no means an expert. If you are concerned about your rankings, you would be well served consulting an expert. I would hate to give you incomplete or simply wrong advice!
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