from a directory to a subdomain

[Walalayo]

Hello,

I must change my forum from a directory to a subdomain ( from mysite.com/forums to forum.mysite.com )

My forum is 8 years old and is very good optimized for trafic from Google , I'm afraid if I change will I lose all my Google positions.

I will make a change in httaccess :

RedirectPermanent /forums htttp://forums.mysite.com

Is it Ok , should i make something else ?

[almedajohnson]

Switching from a directory to a subdomain can have an impact on your website's search engine rankings, but if done properly, it shouldn't cause a significant loss in traffic. Your proposed change in the .htaccess file looks almost correct, but there's a typo in the URL. It should be "http://" instead of "htttp://".

For a seamless transition, you should consider the following steps:
1. Properly configure the 301 permanent redirect in the .htaccess file for each page under /forums to its corresponding page under the subdomain.
2. Update all internal links within your forum to point to the new subdomain.
3. Submit the new subdomain to Google Search Console and monitor for any crawl errors or issues after the migration.
4. Update any backlinks pointing to your forum to reflect the new subdomain.


Moving is never a good idea.

RewriteRule forums/(.*)? http://forums.mysite.com/$1

is probably a better rule to use as it will pass all urls, not just the homepage.