Redirect Process for Moving a Blog

[Flock.Media]

Hi, I've read several articles about the correct process for moving a blog from a subdomain to the main root domain but am not quite 100% sure as to what to do in our scenario. They were hosting their blog on Hubspot which puts the blog on a sub-domain "blog.rootdomain.com". Realizing it isn't benefiting the main website for SEO they want to move it to the main website. I understand we have to redirect the Hubspot "blog." pages to the new "rootdomain.com/blog" pages but when transferred over (it's a WordPress site) it shows the dates. So, the URL is "rootdomain.com/blog/year/month/title". They want to remove the date. Does that mean the URL must be re-written then redirected so that there's no date showing? There's over 300 posts which will have to be redirected from the Hubspot URLs. Is there a way to avoid setting up the second redirect to remove the dates or make it easier so it isn't one page at a time?

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi there Wendy,

Wordpress allows you to specify a default permalink structure that will allow you to avoid inclusion of "/year/month/title".

In the left-hand menu select Settings > Permalinks. Choose the last option (custom) and append "/blog/%postname%/" after your domain name.

[evolvingSEO]

If I'm understanding the question here's what you'll need to do:

1. Redirect the Hubspot blog URLs to the non-date URLs
2. Redirect the Dated URLs to the non dated URLs.

So _instead of _ a set of redirect chains (like shown in my graphic here you'll end up with something like this) - because the dated URLs were already created and "out there" you will have to redirect them to the non-dated URLs as well.

In terms of doing this quickly/automatically since it's 300 URLs, I'd usually do something like this:

1. Put the list of old Hubspot URLs in a spreadsheet column A
2. Put the new dateless URLs in colum B
3. Do some sort of matching work to get the appropriate URLs side by side so they match (what's done here depends on how your URLs are setup - maybe just alphabetical sorting will work)
4. I usually use some concatenates etc to then create each line of Redirects for the .htaccess file

If you're working with Hubspot or something like a partner they should be able to help you with the technical lifting.

PS - My redirect images come from this post, which is about finding and fixing redirect chains

[Flock.Media]

Thanks, Donna! I'll make sure they are aware to choose the option

[Flock.Media]

Thanks, Dan! That was the route I suspected i'd have to take but it helps to get validation!