Change name of directory

[Highland]

You need to add a 301 redirect to your new page. This will send a command to your browser (and any bots) to go to the new page. This page describes how to modify your htaccess file.

[wellnesswooz]

@ Highland: It is not a page, it is a directory.

[NakulGoyal]

Is your website static or uses some sort of a CMS ? It might be possible to do a search and replace for nameofdirectory or newnameofdirectory and that should work. I would also recommend doing a directory level 301 redirect via .htaccess that will redirect  http://www.website.com/**nameofdirectory**/* to http://www.website.com/**new****nameofdirectory**/*

//301 Redirect Entire Directory RedirectMatch 301 /nameofdirectory(.*) /newnameofdirectory/$1

[Highland]

The same principle applies to all rewrites. You can rewrite one page, an entire directory or even your whole site. htaccess is one of Apache's best features and that's why every web server out there offers some version of it.

If I'm still not answering your question then please supply some more details and I can go more in depth.

[wellnesswooz]

The website itself is static but the directory is a CMS. What would be the best option then?

[wellnesswooz]

I just dont see how I can add a 301 redirect to a page. I thought I could only add it in .htaccess?

How about the pages on my website that link to the old directory?

[NakulGoyal]

Download the website and do a search and replace for nameofdirectory to new****nameofdirectory. That should take care of it. Along with that put a 301 in place for any external links going to nameofdirectory. You should be good.

[wellnesswooz]

Is there a software I should use for "Search & Replace"?

[NakulGoyal]

You can use a text editor like Notepad++ for it.

[Highland]

A 301 is the code returned by your web server, along with the address of the new page. htaccess (mod_rewrite) is the most powerful tool to do this because it uses regular expressions to filter (which, consequently, also makes it more difficult to use).

You don't have to use htaccess, however. Virtually all server-side programming languages (like PHP, .NET, Ruby on Rails, etc) support telling Apache what headers to return. Here's a PHP example

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://www.newsite.com");
exit();