Walkthrough · Intermediate · 20 minutes
How to Set Up 301 Redirects
Relocate addresses without shedding the visitors or rankings attached to them — a hands-on walkthrough in plain words that names the classic mistake before you reach it.
The short answer
The job: relocate addresses without shedding the visitors or rankings attached to them. Time to set aside: 20 minutes. Skill needed: intermediate.
Below is the full run of steps, the error most people trip over, and the short cut worth remembering. On Hosting & Domains plans several steps are already automated away — the guide marks each one.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Intermediate
Experience required
5
Stages, start to finish
Free
Support included
Proven
On the platform itself
No prior knowledge assumed — a hosting account, a browser and 20 minutes of attention is the whole entry requirement. Every instruction runs on our platform exactly as printed, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
A promise before step one: nothing here is a one-way door. Any step with teeth is flagged, and the way back is printed beside it.
The route, mapped end to end
Set out end to end, the route is: choose 301 rather than 302, pair every old page with its successor, pick one layer and stay there, flatten the chains and keep an eye on the 404 report.
No part of this needs code or a terminal unless the guide says so plainly — and where it does, the exact commands are printed. The step-by-step is below, with the surrounding sections supplying the context that makes it hold.
The well-worn snag
Chains piling up across successive redesigns, each migration adding a hop until an old backlink crosses four of them, shedding speed and signal at every step. Flatten them to single hops once a year.
Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.
The support desk's own short cut
Keep a redirect ledger: old URL, new URL, date, reason. Three years on, the mystery rules in .htaccess become untouchable because nobody remembers what depends on them. That ledger is your institutional memory.
A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.
Where this platform takes work off you
Steps that never deserved your time are taken out: certificates issue and reissue themselves, the installer handles application setup, the daily copy absorbs the what-ifs, and per-site settings live in a panel rather than a configuration file. The guide covers the remainder — the part that is actually about your site.
Should a step still misfire, support answers at any hour with an actual fix rather than a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half the guides on this site began as repeat patterns in our ticket queue.
A quick platform makes for a short guide
Every walkthrough in this library is run on the platform we actually operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen rather than gesturing at it from a distance.
A free SSL certificate comes with every plan and reissues itself before the old one lapses — the padlock is never yours to diarise.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Every undo written out
Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.
Help that keeps your hours, not ours
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.
5 steps, nothing padded
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, and the fiddly moments are labelled fiddly.
The snag, flagged up front
The classic error for this particular task is named before step one, which is how 20 minutes stays 20 minutes.
Honest about how big it is
Relocate addresses without shedding the visitors or rankings attached to them is a intermediate-level job — set aside 20 minutes, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
Works exactly as printed
Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Choose 301 rather than 302
A 301 tells browsers and crawlers the move is final and passes the signals across with it. A 302 says the opposite, so keep it for detours that genuinely are temporary.
- 2
Pair every old page with its successor
Old URL to its exact replacement. That mapping protects the value stored in deep links, whereas bulk rules dumping everything on the homepage waste it.
- 3
Pick one layer and stay there
Use a redirect plugin for moves within WordPress and .htaccess rules for site-level and pattern work. One mechanism per redirect, kept tidy, so nothing ends up in conflict.
- 4
Flatten the chains
An A-to-B-to-C sequence slows visitors and leaks signal. When B moves to C, go back and point the original A rule straight at C.
- 5
Keep an eye on the 404 report
Search Console and your own logs list the old URLs still being requested. Each 404 that keeps recurring marks a redirect still unwritten.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Softaculous included for one-click application installs
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- WordPress and 400+ further applications installed in one click
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Does a 301 keep the ranking value?
The current consensus is essentially all of it, as long as the target is relevant. Automatic redirect decay is history. An irrelevant target, a page shoved at an unrelated homepage, gets read as a soft 404 instead, so relevance is the entry fee.
When is it safe to remove old redirects?
Treat them as permanent plumbing. External links and bookmarks never entirely catch up, and the redirect keeps converting that legacy traffic indefinitely. Retire only rules whose old URLs draw no requests at all, and read the logs before you do.
Which control panel do accounts use?
cPanel, the panel the industry standardised on long ago. Every tutorial you find online will match what is on your screen, your backups restore onto any other cPanel host, and the skills stay useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are available on particular plans if you prefer either.
Will the renewal cost more than the first term?
No. The rate you order at is the rate you renew at, year after year. There is no introductory teaser here, so no second-year jump is waiting — the hosting line stays a fixed figure your accounts can plan around.
Keep reading
How to Pick a WordPress Page Builder
Decide between the block editor and a builder plugin with the trade-offs in plain view — beginner level, about an evening of testing.
How to Install an SSL Certificate
A certificate issued, fitted and renewing itself, often before you think to ask — beginner level, about 0–20 minutes.
301 Redirect (Glossary)
A single term without the jargon: what it means, why it counts, and where it catches people out.
WHMCS License
Automate billing, provisioning and support for hosting clients of your own.
Web Hosting
cPanel hosting on NVMe drives — SSL, the migration and year one of the name all included.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
Your site has earned better hosting.
Every plan carries the essentials other hosts bill as extras — and support that answers.
View WHMCS License plans