Godaddy Cheap Hosting: Create a redirect page for your blog

If your blog's web address has changed, or if you are using Blogger's custom domain service, you may have need of a redirect page for your blog. A redirect page stays at the location of your old blog (or at the http://yourblog.com address if you are using a Blogger custom domain) and automatically redirects users to your blog's true address.

Here's how to create your own redirect page:

Copy the whole text in the box below and paste into a simple text editor such as Notepad. Change the text in red to reflect your true blog address, and the text in blue to something which better suits your needs.
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.yoururlhere.com" />
</head>
<body bgcolor="#cceedd">
<center>

Your text and images here
For example: My blog is located at www.mydomain.com. You will be redirected to my blog in about 8 seconds. Please update your bookmarks to reflect this new address. 
</body>
</html>

Take note of this line:
meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8;
The "8" means that the browser will wait 8 seconds before redirecting to your true blog address, just enough time for the visitor to read the text and understand the reason for the redirection. You can change this to "0" instead, which means that the redirect would be immediate, and the visitor would be unaware of the change in web address unless they look at the address bar. However, it is good practice to have at least the URL of your true blog address in the body of the page as some older browsers do not recognise the redirect function and would be unaware that your blog is not hosted here.

You should also change the font and background colours to suit your tastes and blog colour scheme/branding. Images can also be displayed in the body section of the page (between <body>> and </body>)

Now, save this file to your computer with the file name "index.html". It is very important that you name it such, as this needs to be the page which loads when a visitor types http://yourblog.com into their web browser.You can preview this in your own browser to check the page looks okay, and you should be redirected to your true online blog address within the time you specified in the meta section.

Now, you need to upload this to the root of the folder where visitors would visit your blog. If you have purchased a custom domain for your Blogger blog, for example, you would upload this to the root of your hosting account. If you are uploading to a previously used sub domain at http://blog.yoursite.com this may be the root of the folder named "/blog/".

Go online to your redirect page address (eg: http://yourblog.com/index.html) and check that the redirection works. Then all you have to relax and know your visitors will be able to find you!

If you have purchased a custom domain for use with a Blogger blog, you should find that your domain provider will provide at least enough room for a single web page, which you can use to upload your redirect page. I use GoDaddy for domains, as this company provides free hosting, personal email address and other features of great use to Bloggers. (Just in case you're wondering, I don't get paid to recommend GoDaddy; but of all the domain providers I've ever used, this company is simply the best value I've found!).

If you have any problems setting up your redirect page, feel free to contact me directly for more detailed help.

Godaddy Cheap Hosting

Sunday, 8 July 2007

Create a redirect page for your blog

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