Implementing 301 Redirects for a Seamless Transition to Fundraise Up
When transitioning from your previous donation platform to Fundraise Up, it's crucial to implement 301 permanent redirects to ensure a smooth user experience and maintain your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. These redirects guide users and search engines from your old donation landing page URLs to the corresponding Fundraise Up URLs.
Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing 301 redirects, as the process varies depending on your website's setup and server environment, we'll explore four common scenarios and provide guidance on how to handle each one.
Apache
If your website runs on an Apache server, you'll need to modify your .htaccess file to set up the 301 redirects. Follow these steps:
- Access your web server using an FTP client.
- Locate the
.htaccessfile in your website's root directory. - Open the file and add the appropriate redirect rules based on your requirements. Here are some common examples:
| Redirect a single page | Redirect 301 /old-page/ /new-page/ |
| Redirect an entire domain to another domain | Redirect 301 / https://www.mycharity.org |
| Redirect an entire site to a subfolder | Redirect 301 / https://www.website.com/subfolder/ |
| Redirect a subfolder to a different domain | Redirect 301 /subfolder https://www.nnewwebsite.com/ |
| Redirect a site directory after a URL change | Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^(.)/old-category/(.)$ $1/new-category/$2 [R,L] |
Nginx
For websites running on an Nginx server, you'll need to modify the .conf file typically found in the root of your server. Here's how to create permanent 301 redirects:
- Access your server and locate the
.conffile. - Open the file and add the appropriate redirect rules. Here are a couple of examples:
| Redirect a single page | server {
# Permanent redirect to an individual page
rewrite ^/old-page$ http://www.website.com/new-page permanent;
} |
| Redirect an entire domain to another domain | server {
# Permanent redirect to new URL
server_name website.com;
rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://newwebsite.com/$1 permanent;
} |
Windows Server
For websites running on a Windows server with ASP.NET, you'll need to modify the web.config file located in the site root. Here's how to implement common 301 redirect types:
- Open the
web.configfile. - Add the appropriate redirect rules within the
<system.webServer>section. Here are a couple of examples:
| Redirect a single page | <location path="old-page">
<system.webServer>
<httpRedirect enabled="true" destination="http://www.website.com/new-page/" httpResponseStatus="Permanent" />
</system.webServer>
</location> |
| Redirect an entire domain to another domain | <system.webServer>
<httpRedirect enabled="true" destination="http://www.newwebsite.com/" />
</system.webServer> |
WordPress
For WordPress websites, the Redirection plugin allows you to easily create 301 redirects without needing FTP access to your web server.