Site moving: Sometimes we want to move or site to different location & infrastructure. In this post we cover all the sections of site moving & give you the tips regarding how to make the preparation, implementation & monitor the site move.
Site move (or site transfer, rename, change, or migration) is dividing in two categories:
Site Move without URL: In this category we only changed the infrastructure of the website without doing any visible change in the URL structure.
For example: You are moving the site www.example.com to another hosting provider without doing any change in its URL. Its URL structure should be same as before.
Site Moving with URL: In this category URL of the website is changed with different ways.
Smart Phone Site Moving Guidelines: Read how to change the configuration on Smartphone websites.
Mobile strategy is developing day by day and you want to change the website configuration you use to server content to your Smartphone visitors.
Here are the two basic steps in moving your Smartphone site from one configuration to another:
Moving from Different URLs to same URL:
Suppose your Smartphone website is hosted on different URLs & you want to move away from that configuration. You can serve same contents to your Smartphone user using the same URL as your desktop site by using these two methods:
Responsive web design:
Responsive web design is recommended due to many reasons. It provides one website for multiple devices using fluid grids, flexible images, and CSS media queries to adapt your site to different screens.
You can save your maintenance cost & resources by using responsive web design. Its configuration makes your site ready for viewing on different devices like smartphones, tablets, TVs...
Tips to move your site safely & correctly
Dynamic serving
In dynamic serving you’d like to merge your mobile URLs to your desktop URL & start serving different code for different devices.
Tips for Dynamic serving
How to Change the configuration on the same URL
In this section there is no need to change the URL, but rather only the method by which you serve content to different devices.
From dynamic serving to responsive web design
Take the following basic approach:
From responsive web design to dynamic serving
Follow this approach:
General recommendations for site moves
Site move (or site transfer, rename, change, or migration) is dividing in two categories:
- Site Moving Without URL
- Site Moving With URL
Site Move without URL: In this category we only changed the infrastructure of the website without doing any visible change in the URL structure.
For example: You are moving the site www.example.com to another hosting provider without doing any change in its URL. Its URL structure should be same as before.
Site Moving with URL: In this category URL of the website is changed with different ways.
- Change in protocol:
- Change in Domain Name:
- Change in URL Path:
Smart Phone Site Moving Guidelines: Read how to change the configuration on Smartphone websites.
Mobile strategy is developing day by day and you want to change the website configuration you use to server content to your Smartphone visitors.
Here are the two basic steps in moving your Smartphone site from one configuration to another:
- Moving to different URLs.
- Changing configuration while preserving the same URLs.
Moving from Different URLs to same URL:
Suppose your Smartphone website is hosted on different URLs & you want to move away from that configuration. You can serve same contents to your Smartphone user using the same URL as your desktop site by using these two methods:
- By using Responsive web design to serve the same HTML code to all devices.
- By using Dynamic serving to provide different HTML code per device.
Responsive web design:
Responsive web design is recommended due to many reasons. It provides one website for multiple devices using fluid grids, flexible images, and CSS media queries to adapt your site to different screens.
You can save your maintenance cost & resources by using responsive web design. Its configuration makes your site ready for viewing on different devices like smartphones, tablets, TVs...
Tips to move your site safely & correctly
- You need to remove the redirection( if used)
- Remove the bidirectional annotations from your desktop and Smartphone URLs( if you have used)
- Redirect your separate Smartphone URLs to your desktop URLs using server-side 302 HTTP redirects( Don’t use JavaScript redirects)
- After doing these steps redesign your main website or setup new page layout. Make sure Google can crawl important files so that they recognize that the website is responsive.
Dynamic serving
In dynamic serving you’d like to merge your mobile URLs to your desktop URL & start serving different code for different devices.
Tips for Dynamic serving
- You need to remove the redirection & vary ( if used)
- Remove the bidirectional annotations from your desktop and Smartphone URLs( if you have used)
- Redirect your separate Smartphone URLs to your desktop URLs using server-side 302 HTTP redirects( Don’t use JavaScript redirects)
- Set up a Vary: user-agent HTTP header (if you don’t already have it) on the destination URL to tell Google bot for Smartphone to crawl your pages and thus recognize the Smartphone-friendly nature of your site. The Vary: user-agent header will help serve the appropriate content to your users according to their user-agent.
- Your next step is to update your user-agent string and add Google bot for Smartphone. Keep in mind that Google bot for Smartphone user-agent identifies itself like an iPhone. User agent detection is not future friendly & it requires to update your strings. Try to use the responsive web design configuration.
How to Change the configuration on the same URL
In this section there is no need to change the URL, but rather only the method by which you serve content to different devices.
From dynamic serving to responsive web design
Take the following basic approach:
- First remove user-agent server codes that serve a different HTML content to Smartphone users.
- Next remove the Vary: user-agent HTTP header on your desktop content for Smartphone users.
- Now redesign your website & Set up your new page layout.
- Make sure Google can crawl important files such as CSS, JS, and images so that they recognize that the website is responsive
From responsive web design to dynamic serving
Follow this approach:
- Set up your new Smartphone-dedicated HTML code.
- Remove the CSS media queries specific to smartphones.
- Set up a Vary: user-agent HTTP header.
General recommendations for site moves
- Move your website into smaller steps. Don’t change your hosting provider and URL at a same time
- Try to move your website when you have low traffic. This lowers the impact of anything that breaks, and also dedicates more of your server’s power to helping Google bot update our index