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Blogger Does Not Support ".htaccess" Based Redirection

If you rename a non Blogger hosted website - and you retain ownership of the previous domain (or re publish a website within the same domain), you can redirect traffic from the old URL to the new URL, for some websites, using the ".htaccess" control file.

Some Blogger blog owners, used to setting up ".htaccess" based redirection for non Blogger websites, have renamed their blog - either from one BlogSpot URL to another, or maybe from a custom domain URL to another URL. Finding the links in the blog now broken, they wonder.
How do I setup .htaccess for the old URL?
This is an option that Blogger does not provide.

Blogger, in general, does not encourage redirection of traffic.

Traffic redirection is an option which many spammers would appreciate. Blogger hosts too many spammers and other miscreants, and they want less spammers - not more.

Redirect within a blog, using custom redirects.

You can use custom redirects, for redirecting specific URLs within a blog. Custom redirects work on a single URL basis, they do not support any type of masking or URL patterns. And custom redirects can't be used for redirecting from one blog to another - or for redirecting outside Blogger.

Blogger does not provide file / folder access.

".htaccess" is a file that is installed in the domain root - and blog owners do not have access to the "blogspot.com" root folder.

If you have just re published a blog from a custom domain back to BlogSpot, you are retaining the domain, and you do not plan to re use the domain for a non Blogger hosted website, you may be able to setup .htaccess on the domain - if the domain host supports it.

Short of that, you are going to have to focus on getting the blog re indexed, under the new URL - and get on with publishing the blog.

Comments

Me said…
Hello-
Thanks for all of your great tips over the years- you have saved me so much time and effort!
Here is my situation: I set up two Blogger Blogs as websites for the nonprofit org where I volunteer teaching ESL. One site is in English, and the other is in Spanish, each residing on a different custom domain. They are presently accessible one from the other by menu links.
What I would like to do is setup a subdirectory-type location for each site on one of the domains : www.example.org/en, and www.example.org/es. I also want to create a separate site for special notices, and one site each for our 4 class levels for a total of five additional sites, each redirected to a separate subdirectory url. Is this at all possible with Blogger?
Thanks,
Maestro Carey
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Maestro,

Thanks for the question.

Let's try using a Blogger custom domain. You can have two blogs, to start.
en.example.org
es.example.org

Next, you relate the two (or however many you wish to use) using a language related blog cluster.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2015/05/publish-language-related-blog-cluster.html
Me said…
So sub domains would be the way to go, and using the "hreflang" tag would ensure no penalty for duplicated content, right? I didn't know about that tag, thanks. I had pretty much found out after many searches that Google wouldn't permit me to use subdirectories or subfolders for separate sites.
Alicia said…
It is possible to get custom redirection through apache server, but I will not be able to explain it technically.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Alicia,

Thanks for the heads up. Yes, I'm sure that Apache server will do an .htaccess redirection.

That said, you have to redirect the blog to the Apache server - and redirecting a Blogger blog is not a trivial exercise.

It is not possible to redirect a BlogSpot published blog, without risking hacking / spam classification. And a non BlogSpot published blog can't be redirected, without "CNAME" referral, to a Google server.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2013/04/blogger-blogs-cannot-be-used-as-gateways.html

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2010/02/blogger-magic-custom-domain-redirects.html

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