Yesterday, I decided to convert a static site, into a dynamic site, powered by WordPress, since it had become difficult to maintain, due to it’s size. Also, I was not happy with the link and directory structure of the site. To let the search engines know, what I was doing, I was planning to use 301 redirects. The plan was to create the .htaccess file, manually, with all the proper 301 directions.

For you that doesn’t know, a 301 redirect, is an efficient way of letting the search engines know that a page or a whole site, has moved permanently to a new location. By using a 301 redirect, all the old page’s properties, are transferred to the new page.

However, after I had installed WordPress, over the old site, and configured it, I created the 301 redirections. For some reason, I couldn’t get the .htaccess, to work the way I wanted it to. Then I thought, there must be an easier way, to accomplish this. So, I turned to Google and started to search for a solution, to my 301 redirect problem.

After a couple of searches, I found this brilliant plugin for WordPress, called Redirection. It solved all my problems, in a snap!

Redirection, is very easy to use, yet very powerful. It works like this, you upload it to your plugin directory, activate it, then you go to the Redirection’s settings, that you’ll find under the manage menu.
Then you type in the old path of the file and the new location, press the button, and your done.

Now, Redirect can do more then just manage your 301 redirections. It also, gives you statistics on how often an old page was redirected, it keeps track of 404 errors, creates pass-through redirections, lets you add or remove www to your pages and much more. Redirect does not require .htaccess, all work is done entirely inside your WordPress installation.

So if you are going to convert your static site to WordPress, change your site’s domain name or change the structure of your site, I can recommend you to take advantage of this powerful WordPress plugin. It saved me a lot of time!

You can read more about Redirection and download it from it’s homepage, located here, http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/