Redirect different domain name to new domain

Publishing help Project settings
1

I’ve recently published a new Webflow site (empireeventsnc.com) that brought all the content from 4 different individual venue websites that have their own domains into the new site. 3 of those 4 domains are currently Webflow sites hosted with Webflow plans.

The goal of the empireeventsnc.com site is to consolidate all our venue websites into this site and for the pages of the individual venues to be redirected to the their corresponding pages of the empireeventsnc.com site. The existing/old venue web hosting plans would then be downgraded to starter sites, so setting up redirects on the Webflow sites will not be possible with the starter site status.

I am ready to set up redirects from the individual venue websites pages to their corresponding sections on the new empireeventsnc.com site.

For example: https://www.thestockroomat230.com/ would redirect to The Stockroom at 230 | Historic Wedding and Event Venue in Downtown Raleigh North Carolina

(I’ve organized each venue into folders in the designer)

Screenshot 2024-02-16 at 10.00.39 AM
Screenshot 2024-02-16 at 10.00.39 AM468×1220 24 KB

I know that I will need to set up domain forwarding for the individual venue URLs where those domains are hosted. What I don’t know is if I need to set up the domain forwarding before I can set up the page redirects within the Webflow publishing settings for the empireeventsnc.com hosting plan, since I want to redirect different domains to one domain.

Or do I need to (is it possible to) add the individual domains to as additional custom domains to the empireeventsnc.com hosting plan in order to set up redirects where the old URL is a under a different domain than the new URL.

If the only option is just the domain forwarding, once that is set up and Google reindexes, will the search results (see screenshot) be updated to reflect the new site structure?

Screenshot 2024-02-16 at 9.24.27 AM
Screenshot 2024-02-16 at 9.24.27 AM1920×1029 99.5 KB

I’d appreciate any advice on this matter. Thanks!

Here is my site Read-Only: [LINK][1]
([how to share your site Read-Only link][2])

2

A few key things about Webflow’s redirects-

  • The “From” is always a local path, it can’t differentiate by domain. If you have 4 domains on the same site, it sees them all as the same.
  • The “To” can be to an external path

So, in your single-hosted-site with all-domains config, you have these problems;

  • You can’t redirect the different home pages since they’re all at /
  • You will likely have overlap e.g. domainA.com/events v. domainB.com/events

OPTIONS

  • Keep your 3 deprecated sites running. Downgrade them to basic plans. Setup a big stack of redirects there, which point to the new URL, e.g. on deprecated site A you might have / → newdomain.com/homepageA
  • Setup an external redirector solution, which does this outside of Webflow for each site.

If your number of redirects is low, like 20 per site, Cloudflare’s free DNS tier allows for 20 redirects. You can move your DNS there and set these up. There are ways to make it seamless so that the site you’re deprecating doesn’t go offline during the setup process.

When I build these for clients I’m often handling hundreds or thousands of redirects, so I typically build it as a reverse proxy against a key-value store.

If you need any pro help, click my name to send me a message and I’ll send you my details.

3

Thanks Michael. Appreciate the insight. In my research it had been looking like I might not be able to do the redirects within Webflow, and this confirms it for me. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my question.

4

Hi Michael - I have a very similar conundrum and would love to see if you could help. Just messaged you on sygnals, would be hugely appreciated if you;'d mind dropping me a line. Thanks!