How To Redirect A Domain Without Changing The URL
At times, you want to redirect or forward your existing domain to another one, but do not want to change the URL of the site after redirecting your domain. You want the same old URL before you made the change. In this tutorial, you will learn to redirect a domain without changing the URL.
Prerequisites
A Domain name (example.com0
cPanel Credentials
FTP Client (Filezilla, Cyberduck)
Text Editor (Notepad, Sublime Text)
Step 1:
Login to your cPanel using your credentials and Locate File Manager. Click File Manager.
Step 2:
Open the .htaccess file located in the public_html directory.
Step 3:
Right-click the .htaccess file and Click on Edit. It will show up the Edit pop up. Click on Edit button. You can also use an FTP client manager to access the root directory of your site and make changes to the .htaccess file using your favorite text editor.
Step 4:
Add the following line of code in your .htaccess file if you want to redirect your visitors from your old domain to new domain without changing the URL. If you want your visitors who are coming to example1.com in their browser and want them to redirect to example2.com without changing the URL, then you can add this line for redirection using the .htaccess file. This will enable the content of example2.com to be loaded when a visitor tries to access example1.com.
RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ^example1.com RewriteRule ^(.*) http://example2.com/$1 [P]
The first line tells Apache to start the rewrite module. The second line specifies the redirect from the source domain to the destination domain.
Step 5:
You can even redirect visitors from one domain to a specific page from another domain. You can set the redirection by adding the following line of codes to your .htaccess file. This will enable your visitor who is visiting example1.com to redirect automatically to a specific page of example2.com or any other website that is mentioned in the redirection rule.
RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ^example1.com RewriteRule ^(.*) http://example2.com/redirectedpage [P]
You can similarly redirect an IP address to a specific website. Add the following line of codes to your .htaccess file.
RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ^192.168.45.11 RewriteRule (.*) http://example2.com/$1 [R=301,L]
L means this is the last rule in this run. After this rewrite is complete, the web server will return a result. The R=301 means that the web server returns a 301 moved permanently to the requesting browser or search engine.
Step 6:
Search engines remove the trailing slashes from URLs. This could sometimes result in a content problem when the same page can be accessed through different URLs. This problem can be solved by writing a .htaccess rule for trailing slashes.
Add the following line of code the .htaccess file.
RewriteEngineOn RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond%{REQUEST_URI} !example.php RewriteCond%{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
Conclusion:
By making some changes to the .htaccess file of your WordPress site, you can easily redirect a domain name to another without changing the URL.
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