How to combine multiple old websites into one new Webflow site: 301 Redirect / SSL Issues

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1

I have a new site that combines four old non-Webflow websites into one new Webflow website:

Before

After

so that child-company-a.com should redirect to parent-company.com/child-company-a, etc.

Question
What is the proper way to setup the redirects / handle SSL? When I add a simple 301 redirect record into my DNS, it complains about mismatched SSL certificates when you click an old link like https://child-company-a.com and it redirects to the new Webflow site that has a different SSL certificate.

2

This is probably a question for your DNS provider- you shouldn’t have issues doing a redirect to your Webflow site.

For your scenario, I’d recommend Cloudflare’s free DNS, which allows for 3 page rules.

You’d setup e.g. child-company-a.com on CloudFlare’s DNS, with a page rule of;

URL = `*child-company-a.com/*`
Setting = `Forwarding URL`
Status code = `301`
Destination URL = `https://parentcompany.com/child-company-a`

You may need to enter some A and CNAME records in order to enable Cloudflare’s proxy feature, which is needed for page rules. If so you, can just use Webflow’s settings, e.g.;

image

Page rules are powerful, and support wildcards, so if you really wanted to, you can support path mapping, e.g.;

A request to https://child-company-a.com/product/something could be redirected to https://parentcompany.com/child-company-a/product/something.

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/using-wildcards-in-page-rules/140675

1 Like
3

@memetican amazing, thank you. We’re going to experiment with this info. The one thing throwing me off is that Webflow says it is not compatible with Cloudflare’s Proxy feature, due to SSL issues, which seems similar to what we’re seeing, but I’m hopeful that’s not the case.

4

Forgot to click send… too many virtual desktops.

Yes I believe that’s correct, but don’t worry, it’s not relevant here. Your child-company* domains don’t actually link to, and Webflow isn’t even aware of them. You simply do not put them in your Webflow site hosting settings, only parent-company.com.

Cloudflare redirects requests to your child-company* domains to parent.company.com, and Webflow is not involved.