Resolved Moving hyperlinks en masse from one website to another

A friend with a genealogy website wishes to move her webpages from one host to another but she says she now has to go through every one of hundreds of links on her webpages and re-connect them.

Can this be done en masse?

 

Sounds like she was using full links rather than relative, a quick search and replace using a text editor should work.

In the future use relative links...

See Links in HTML documents and How to Make Relative Links

 

Thank you wildfire, I shall send this link to her in an e-mail.

 

First, you don't say whether the site is a static site (ie a lot of individual pages) or a dynamic site (ie database driven).

If its a static site, then she needs to download the entire site including the folder structure into a folder on her local computer using a FTP program. Then she needs to upload the entire site to the new server. Whether the links are absolute or relative is irrelevant. Neither does she need to go through the site updating the links. If she's looking for a tool to do this she can download a months trial of Adobe Dreamweaver which has tools for link checking built into it.

If its a dynamic site, she needs to download the entire site as above to a local folder on her own computer. Additionally, she needs to back up the database thats on the server to her local machine. The procedure is dependant on the type of database thats driving the site. Once that's done, it can be restored to the new server just like any other backup.

Hope that helps.

 

Sounds reasonable dnmcleod. Thank you. I'm sure one or all of these solutions will prove useful

 

The one thing you don't indicate in your original post is whether there's a domain name attached to the site or is it on a free hosting such as yahoo or google sites. If a domain name is involved, then she needs to make sure the transfer of the domain name is completed along with the transfer of the files. Its preferable to have the website and the domain name with the same hosting company as it keeps everything more straightforward. Otherwise there's a bill for the domain name and another for the hosting and it just creates confusion.

 

Good point, thank you.

Yes, she had one domain name with the first web host (don't think it's a freebie) but has changed it slightly for the new web host as she's leaving the original - lack of support.

 

It would be better for her to migrate the domain name along with the site if she can. If she doesn't, then she's basically starting from scratch as regards search engine rankings. At the very least she should use a 301 redirect to let the search engines know that the site has moved. Additionally, she should use the google tools for advising of the site's movement.

If she can hang onto the existing domain name, then this is simply unnecessary as all that's required is the Domain Name Servers to be updated and that normally completes in around 24 hours.

 

I haven't heard from her since I started this thread and, since I don't know too much about websites and she knows less, I think I'm going to hang on and see if she can follow and implement some of the suggestions here.

If necessary I may have to come back about 301 direct etc.

Thank you for your helpful input so far.

 

Thank You guys, it seems she must have used Relative Links because it looks like the use of text-editor helped her resolve the problem.

 

Good news!!

 

Thank you both, Widfire and dnmacleod

 

You're welcome!!