Migrate WordPress Blog From Old Domain to New: The Easiest Way

There’s nothing to introduce WordPress to the daily blogger. In the blogosphere WordPress has made its position high among others by its  user as well as search engine friendly interface. Nowadays, most of the blogger use WordPress as a platform to create their website.
Assuming that you are familiar with WordPress and have a blog, it may so happen that one day you feel that your domain name is not so going well (or rather not matching) with your niche. Obviously it is not so a pleasant scenario if you have already invested a huge effort to your existing site. Changing your domain name will result in not only losing your blogs but also losing all your traffic.
Well, no need to get panicked. For, here we’ll see and plow on the process to migrate your WordPress blog from the old domain to a new one with out losing any traffic. However, before starting the migration process you must go through the following  steps:
1. Block your old blog from search engines by robots.txt.
2. Install WordPress in your new domain.
3. Set the post Permalinks as your choice. You can also keep the old site Permalinks configuration.
4. Create a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling your site and keep it in the root directory at the server.
5. Keep backup of image folder ( /wp-content/uploads) from the old domain server and upload that in the new domain server.

Step #1. Importing all the posts from the old blog

Onward WordPress 2.7, the Import and Export  options has been included. So what you have to do at first is that to export all the post from the old domain and import that post to your new domain. Follow the steps below:

• Log-in to your WordPress admin area of the old site.
• Click on “Export” under “Tools”.

• Click on “Download Export File” button.

Now all the posts will be copied in your computer along with the comments as a XML file. Wait until the download is completed.
In the new site, log-in to the admin area and click on “Import” under the “Tools” menu > Click on WordPress > Browse for the file that you’ve just downloaded and import that file. Wait for some time until the importing is completed. In the mean time you will get an option, asking if you want to import all the comments and images. Choose as you like and let to complete the importing process.
Now you are done. All the posts of your old domain has imported in the new domain with the same status. That’s all you have to do with your WordPress control panel.

Step #2:

Now submit both the website url to Webmaster tool. If the old site is already submitted then submit only the new one. Sign in to your Webmaster account of the old domain. Now select your domain and click on “Change of address” under Site configuration. Then follow the steps as it says.

After completing the address change request follow the next step.

Step #3:

Now yo have to redirect each post of the old site to the new site post url. This job is tiresome. But there is no shortcut way. You can directly 301 redirect the old domain to the new domain but that not good choice for the traffic that has already gained in the old site. So I recommend to redirect each post. Learn more about 301 redirect.
You can redirect the posts by using some plugin. But using .htaccess file can be more wise. Download the .htaccess file from the old domain server. you can find it at the root directory. Now open that file with notepad. Add the redirect rule to redirect the old urls to the corresponding  new url. The redirect rule structure is as follows

As example, if you want to redirect the url:
http://www.olddomain.com/redirect-the-post/5678/ to http://www.newdomain.com/this-is-redirected-page/1243/
then you should add the following line in the .htaccess file:

Never write the old domain address in the place of the old post url.
By following the above rule redirect each post of the old domain to the new site post url. After completing replace the old .htaccess file with the new one.
Now your migration is complete. Release the search bots to crawl, through robot.txt in each sites.
After the “Change of address” request in Webmaster tools, Google will verify the sites and start to crawl and index the new site. The crawling and indexing process may be started in late. Don’t panic! Allow minimum two weeks to start the indexing process.
If after along lime you see that your new site still out of crawling and indexing the you can send a reconsideration request to Google from the Webmaster tools account. Before submitting the request you must check through both sites for any mistake. If you think every thing is ine then submit a reconsideration request. Learn more about “Reconsideration request” from Digital Inspiration.
Let me know if you are facing any problem.