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  • #206150
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    Ok, not sure if this is the right place to ask but I’m desperate for some advice/help and don’t know where to go. I built a website in 2004 using GoDaddy. I’ve finally decided to upgrade to the new builder and found it pretty easy to use. Problem is now my pages URL’s are different. They tell me they can’t redirect my old pages to my new.
    My Domain hasn’t changed. handcraftedtimber.com it’s just the new wooden signs page for example is handcraftedtimber.com/wooden-signs.html My old one was handcraftedtimber.com/wooden_signs.php

    Google had me in top position for my ‘wooden signs’ page using that keyword. Now my business is suffering, for a little while the SERP’s were giving 404 errors, now I’ve gone from the first page of Google and my new page hasn’t showed up anywhere near first page yet.

    I’m told I can’t do anything about it. I cannot do a redirect according to GoDaddy. What should I do? Start all over with a new website and try to do it on WordPress instead then just use GoDaddy to host and keep my domain?
    Should I hang in in there and hope it sorts out in few weeks?
    I’ve completley run out of money as I don’t get paid to sit here trying to figure out why my website is no longer bringing in business. I’ve relied on this income for 11 years now. I have no other way to make money at the moment and have a growing family.
    Please Help, I just need to know what I should do. I can probably get a refund from GoDaddy but I don’t want to end up loosing even more time and money trying to set up something else.
    Thanks for your time.
    Regards
    Andrew

    #206161
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    I can’t seem to reply for some reason. Tried sending it twice now.

    #206162
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    I’m told I don’t have access to the root folder with GoDaddy. Can’t do redirects.

    #206167
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    Yea, I’m looking at Bluehost with WordPress, just don’t know where to begin, about to watch a video tutorial I found for free, hopefully I will figure it out. Might start a whole new site then eventually get my domain from Godaddy and put it to the new site. I’ve had it working well for 11 years so it would be a shame to loose it but maybe a fresh start with a new domain name would be better. I just don’t want penalties for having duplicate content or whatever.

    Thanks for your help so far, It can be hard to find any unbiased advice on what’s the best course of action for my business. Is there a good forum or somewhere who could advise me?

    #206169
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    ok, thanks but won’t that stop my current site from working? I thought i’t would be better to start a whole new site then redirect the domain later to avoid losing business while I get my new site going.

    #206175
    Shikkediel
    Participant

    Your hosting sounds less than helpful here (unfortunately they do have that reputation). Really quite ridiculous that you are not allowed to place a htaccess file in the public root folder. I’ve never come acros that, even with free hosting.

    A temporary solution might be to upload a php version of the page as well but without any content other than a meta tag redirect to the current html page :

    http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411567/3168107

    It’s not a permanent solution but at least your existing customers will have an easier time finding the website…

    #206176
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    Upload a php version of my page? I don’t have access to the old builder anymore so all those pages are gone otherwise I could probably do something like what you describe. Only have the new one now and my new page urls are html. Sorry but I think I’m in over my head with all this. I’m a woodworker :) Do you mean make a whole new page with wordpress? Then put it in there to redirect my old url to my new? I’m not sure I’d know how to do all that. I can insert html on my new pages but I guess that can’t help anything.

    #206178
    Shikkediel
    Participant

    a php version of my page

    I could really be the same page, with the only difference that it is saved as .php instead of .html (and that redirect meta tag of course). Both files would then be placed in the same directory. But reading back, it looks like you don’t have direct server access at all (with ftp for example) so that might not even be possible.

    Updating to a new host seems best in any case (it’s all become much cheaper and faster anyway), although I feel GoDaddy should really try to help out an 11-year customer in some way, especially one that is depending on it for the family’s income.

    #206182
    Shikkediel
    Participant

    I would certainly make an effort to keep the domain name by the way. If you decide to change it, you could still redirect all the ‘old’ traffic to the new domain at about $10 a year…

    #206209
    Senff
    Participant

    It’s likely you can’t put an .htaccess file in the root of your site when you use that particular builder. Builders often have certain types of restrictions to avoid people “hacking the system”, or (accidentally) breaking things.

    I’d say the lack of .htaccess option is completely normal.

    If you would develop your site manually (meaning: NOT using the GoDaddy builder, and use WordPress or any other CMS), you can still do that on GoDaddy, and then you will have the option to use an .htaccess file (WordPress requires it). Hence, you don’t need to go to another host at all, and in my opinion that would only be additional hassle (moving files, database, DNS change, etc.)

    Though technically, moving from the GoDaddy builder to GoDaddy “normal” hosting could be considered changing hosts.)

    Having said all that, it might be easier/faster to just create redirect files for each page on your site (I don’t know how many you have though). So for example, you’d create wooden_signs.html and have it contain a 0-second redirect to wooden-signs.html (see this page for details). It wouldn’t be a good long-term solution, but it would be for the shorter term.

    #206222
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    Thanks for all your help people. Was trying to reply but I think I had trouble sending because of a three letter abbreviation for optimizing for Google? So I’ll see if this goes through.

    I might just set up a new domain and hosting with GoDaddy then use WordPress on it. It’s only because I used their builder that I can’t access the root directory. If I just had hosting from them I think I’d have more freedom and be able to do better Optimization on WordPress with ftp and all.
    I might get it up and running then eventually direct my original domain to the new site. Just worried about having duplicate content on two domains for one business. I guess I’ll learn the hard way if Google doesn’t like it. I might run it as a blog at first and link to it from my existing website. Until I get familiar with WordPress.

    I think it may be too late to do anything about redirecting from my old page, those are no longer showing in search results so no one is clicking through anyway, my homepage is moving up a little toward the top again so I guess that’s good. There may be some old links leading in from other places so I’ll have to check those and try to have them changed. (providing there aren’t too many)

    So you’re saying that if I make a new page with a new domain name I could use .htaccess on that new page to redirect any old link traffic that’s trying to find my old URl’s. I can’t see how that would work, if it’s taking them to a 404 error page how will that page know to redirect to my new domain? Sorry for being such a novice.

    #206239
    Shikkediel
    Participant

    three letter abbreviation

    Yep, posting S-E-O does not go well with the forum…

    worried about having duplicate content

    You could make Google (and other search engines) not index it until it is ready by using a robot.txt. Or you could disallow everyone except your own IP with htaccess up to that point.

    use .htaccess on that new page to redirect any old link traffic

    It would actually be the other way around (placing the file on the old domain)… again, with some htaccess rules you could also redirect any incoming traffic from existing external links to your new main page for example. For this, you could get some hosting that would allow to create multiple domains (that would probably be easiest to set up).

    Hope it all works out for ya!

    #206242
    ausworkshop
    Participant

    Ok thanks that makes sense. Just one more question. Do some hosts not allow multiple domains? Not sure what you mean.

    #206248
    Shikkediel
    Participant

    Depends a bit on the hosting package but I think most allow to create at least two. Might be worth checking though so you wouldn’t need another account just for redirecting the old domain.

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