Moving site from subdirectory – what happens at the old URL

  • I have a WP install in mysite.com/blog and I’m going to move it to the root directory.

    I’m then going to add /blog/ to the new permalink structure so that all incoming links to current blog articles remain active.

    This part I understand and it seems pretty simple.

    What isn’t clear to me is what will people find if they go to mysite.com/blog in the future? Will that just 404? I know that there are many backlinks directly to my blog and not to specific articles so I want to understand what’s going to happen there.

    I thought about creating a page called ‘blog’ and setting that as the “posts page” in the reading settings, then setting a different static page for the site’s front page.

    Would this work though? Can you have a page that has the url mysite.com/blog , if your WP files are all stored in a folder at mysite.com/blog ? Would this cause a clash and not work?

    thanks for your help in advance!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

  • Create a post/page /blog than ask Google to stop /blog from indexing. You can do this with Google webmaster tools. After some weeks you can remove /blog

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    No i don’t want google to stop indexing it. I want people to be able to go to /blog and see the posts page.

    What I’m wondering is whether it’s possible to create a page that’s called /blog whilst also having all my files within a subdirectory that’s also called /blog ?

    Yes, you can. A bit tricky but you can. https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/6373/wp-page-and-subdirectory-with-same-name

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    Yikes! Thank you Jan! That might be a bit beyond me… I’ll dig into this a bit more. Is there any kind of downside to doing this kind of .htaccess trickery?

    Yep, tricky. Why don’t you create a page with te name Blog and slug weblog (or something else) ? Than you can still create de directory with blog

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    The only real reason is that there are a lot of links out there that are directly pointing at mysite.com/blog so I’m trying to figure out a way to work with those. I also much prefer the slug /blog over anything else.

    The slug of the main posts page will be /blog if you use custom permalinks and you set up a Page called Blog as your main posts page.

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    Yep… but my understanding is that I can’t create a page with a slug that is /blog if my WP files are all in a subdirectory that is also /blog. There would be a clash no?

    No – there shouldn’t be if you allow WordPress to take over the root domain.

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    Hmm, this might just be something I have to try on a test site then because I’m getting conflicting answers to that question! I’m just being cautious because the site gets a fair bit of traffic so I want to make the switch as seamless as possible.

    Since the instructions require you to COPY not MOVE the index.php from the install location though, would the remaining index.php file in the /blog directory not cause the issue with any page that you also gave the slug /blog?

    Thread Starter whistlerdan

    (@whistlerdan)

    @ esmi , thank you!! This actually DID work! Despite many people telling me it would not (you were the only one that said it would work and that was enough for me to test it out).

    So in conclusion:

    I have my WP install in a subdirectory called /blog and I also have a page with the slug /blog which is set as the static posts page in the reading settings. Works like a charm.

    Excellent! Glad to hear that everything worked out for you. ??

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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