Moving a community to a new domain

[GlennD]

Hi,

I am wondering if anyone has moved their Khoros community to a new domain before and what that experience was like?

[JasonHill]

Hi @GlennD 

Last October we moved our community from workshop.com.au to workshop.bunnings.com.au as part of rebranding our community to Bunnings Workshop and the start of much tighter integration between our community and our .com website.

It has been a positive move for us, with a significant lift in organic traffic because of the greater domain authority we now enjoy. 

With plenty of planning internally and with Khoros, the right communications to your members, and redirects in place, there's no reason why the move can't be relatively painless for all. 

Can I ask why you are considering the move?

Jason

[GlennD]

Thanks Jason. We're potentially looking at some rebranding so right now we're doing an audit of what work would be needed. Fortunately, it looks like I will be able to do a lot of the superficial work myself, but changing the domain feels like area where the worst things could go wrong.

[karolinalinda]

Hi @GlennD,

We've just launched our brand new Community this month and changed the domain. Honestly? It was quite a nightmare in our case and we're still struggling with some redirect issues.
Lessons learned that may help you avoid unnecessary stress:

1. Make sure that the domain you'd like to take is not already taken by, for example, another internal department, etc.
2. Make sure you know who owns your desired domain. This will be your main point of contact to do all necessary DNS changes.
3. Make sure Khoros sets up an SSL cert for your old domain to make redirects work. Otherwise, your links in Google will show errors.

Also: not every page has a corresponding page in the new Community. Be prepared that those links will show 404 as a result. Get rid of them asap.

We also wanted to have a more obvious domain, which is now https://community.dynatrace.com 🙂 

Cheers,

Karolina

[GlennD]

Hi Karolina,

Thank you, this is very helpful.

Glenn