Transition site from one domain to another

[daniel.whiting]

Hi there

I have a live site that’s been working really well for the best part of a year (thanks bubble!) and I need to rebrand it which involves the url changing.

There are a few forum articles out there, but none seem to cover this scenario.

I can rebrand the site in test, but the URLs are all on the old domain which isn’t ideal from an approval standpoint. I understand the process to change the domain so that’s fine. After the change, and this is the most important part, I need the old links to the system to carry on working, such as an opt-out link that went out in emails. What is the best way to handle this?

Is it something like host the old domain name on a static web host, and have a redirect header?

Thanks for any advice provided!

[mani2726]

Keep your old domain. and some Dns setting for forwarding your old domain into new domain from the hosting server alone.
For example of few from godaddy, 1&1 & google custom domain as follows,

Godaddy - Forward my domain

Domain Forwarding - IONOS Help

https://support.google.com/domains/answer/4522141?hl=en
May be it can help you.

[daniel.whiting]

Ok, thanks. My registrar has a similar option with no hosting fees, even though it’s an HTTP response, so that’s great.

I think to test the new addresses before the change and avoid any certificate errors I would need to make the changes in dev, duplicate the app, add the new domain to the test app, run the tests, make any updates in parallel, delete the test app, push dev to live and put the new domain on the old app.

Cheers