35 Create a redirect page for your blog

If your blog's web address has changed, or if you are using Blogger's custom domain service, you may have need of a redirect page for your blog. A redirect page stays at the location of your old blog (or at the http://yourblog.com address if you are using a Blogger custom domain) and automatically redirects users to your blog's true address.

Here's how to create your own redirect page:

  1. Copy the whole text in the box below and paste into a simple text editor such as Notepad. Change the text in red to reflect your true blog address, and the text in blue to something which better suits your needs.
    <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.yoururlhere.com" /> </head> <body bgcolor="#cceedd"> <center> <p> <font color="#446666"><b>Your text and images here</p> <p>For example: My blog is located at www.mydomain.com. You will be redirected to my blog in about 8 seconds. Please update your bookmarks to reflect this new address. </p> </body> </html>
  2. Take note of this line:
    meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8;
    The "8" means that the browser will wait 8 seconds before redirecting to your true blog address, just enough time for the visitor to read the text and understand the reason for the redirection. You can change this to "0" instead, which means that the redirect would be immediate, and the visitor would be unaware of the change in web address unless they look at the address bar. However, it is good practice to have at least the URL of your true blog address in the body of the page as some older browsers do not recognise the redirect function and would be unaware that your blog is not hosted here.
  3. You should also change the font and background colours to suit your tastes and blog colour scheme/branding. Images can also be displayed in the body section of the page (between <body>> and </body>)
  4. Now, save this file to your computer with the file name "index.html". It is very important that you name it such, as this needs to be the page which loads when a visitor types http://yourblog.com into their web browser.You can preview this in your own browser to check the page looks okay, and you should be redirected to your true online blog address within the time you specified in the meta section.
  5. Now, you need to upload this to the root of the folder where visitors would visit your blog. If you have purchased a custom domain for your Blogger blog, for example, you would upload this to the root of your hosting account. If you are uploading to a previously used sub domain at http://blog.yoursite.com this may be the root of the folder named "/blog/".
  6. Go online to your redirect page address (eg: http://yourblog.com/index.html) and check that the redirection works. Then all you have to relax and know your visitors will be able to find you!

If you have purchased a custom domain for use with a Blogger blog, you should find that your domain provider will provide at least enough room for a single web page, which you can use to upload your redirect page. I use GoDaddy for domains, as this company provides free hosting, personal email address and other features of great use to Bloggers. (Just in case you're wondering, I don't get paid to recommend GoDaddy; but of all the domain providers I've ever used, this company is simply the best value I've found!).

If you have any problems setting up your redirect page, feel free to contact me directly for more detailed help.

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35 Comments:

9 July 2007 02:27 *Miss Nice* said...

hello amanda! I have understood how to do this, but where in Godaddy do I do this? Do I go to the hosting control center? What should I do after that?

9 July 2007 02:39 *Miss Nice* said...

What I mean is that I have understood what you need to do but where do I upload the file? Where do I create a index.html? Can you post the details on how to upload it the notepad to Godaddy? Thank you so much, you have been very very helpful!!!

9 July 2007 11:47 Amanda said...

Hello Miss Nice,

You need to create the redirect file, "index.html" on your computer and upload this to your hosting account with GoDaddy via FTP. A few people have asked me about this now, so I've just created a post explaining how to set up your free (ad-supported) hosting account with GoDaddy. The free hosting doesn't automatically show in your account settings, so you'd need to set this up. Hope this helps! If you need any more assistance, please send me an email so I can go through this with you in more detail (my contact link is in the header section).

4 August 2007 00:57 gojeffrey said...

Just wanted to give you a BIG THANK YOU for posting this very helpful information. Now my Blogger blog is set up with my own domain, and I have a redirect page in case someone doesn't include the "www". Perfect. Thank you again!!!

8 August 2007 23:35 ordinarygirl said...

New blogger doesn't allow html. Is there any way to do this with xml?

8 August 2007 23:56 Amanda said...

Hello Ordinarygirl,

The redirect page isn't hosted on Blogger: you'd need to host this with the company you purchase your domain name from. Perhaps these posts will help you better understand what I mean:

How to set up your Blogger custom domain with GoDaddy

How to set up your Blogger custom domain

Hope this helps!

18 August 2007 11:15 Thomas Tvivlaren said...

And you can always spice it up a little. Here's my take! :) (Unfortunately only in swedish but I think you will get the idea nevertheless.)

Nice posts by the way!

20 August 2007 20:04 South Florida Housing Bubble said...

Thanks for the great instructions. It was driving me crazy that people couldn't reach my site without including "www."

21 August 2007 07:49 Jim said...

great instructions. anybody have problems making the index.html file using textedit on a mac? i wasn't able to get my file working until i switched from my mac to my pc.

16 December 2007 16:22 MikeTrinch said...

Hi Amanda, a little off/on topic but can a blog be redirected to another web site? I created a blog with a custom domain name, during that time I created a web site that I am almost finished with (wanted the blog to go live to to get some nice search engine placement so I used the custom domain for it) and now I want to revert back to the traditional blogger URL (.blogspot.com), use the domain name for the web site I have created and when someone clicks on my blog url it goes to my web site.. is this possibe using your method or does it only work for redireciting to the same blog? my domain is hosting by godaddy as well. Thanks.

It is a very good domain name for my real estate business and I do not want it to be used just as a blog. I guess basically I am trying to take advantage of the good search engine placement a blog naturally gets and having all visitors be redirected to my web site and basically not being going to my blog at all. Thanks.

16 December 2007 21:40 Amanda said...

Hello Mike,

It certainly is possible to do what you are asking, though the method is quite different from that which I explained in the above tutorial.

My advice would be to purchase some hosting with your GoDaddy account (which is very reasonable priced for the starter packages) and begin to build your website using this hosting which is associated with your current domain name. Then let go of the custom domain with Blogger by choosing to publish back to your Blog*spot domain, and reset the DNS settings in your GoDaddy dashboard (look for a link to revert the settings to default near the bottom of the page in your GoDaddy account).

Finally, you can add some code to the header of your Blogger template to create an automatic redirection to your custom domain name (and thus to your new website).

This code is basically the same as that described above:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.yoururlhere.com" />

Simply replace the URL with that of your domain name, and add this just after the opening <head> tag in your template.

Be sure to wait until the association between your blog and your custom domain has been completely dropped first though, otherwise you will create an unwanted loop which will constantly redirect your readers back and forth!

Hope this information is useful to you. Please feel free to contact me by email if you need more detailed advice.

24 December 2007 15:48
sundae said...

Huge thanks Amanda..
I've been googling around and at last landed here.

It works with just one paste. Awesome!

Merry christmas Amanda!

23 August 2008 13:56 Rick Lim said...

Thanks for this tutorial. I had been wondering how to do that until i read this.

2 September 2008 00:58 praning5254 said...

Hello, Amanda!

thanks a bunch for this post...This is what I have been surfing for all night...

14 October 2008 07:39 Tessa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
20 February 2009 01:51 Koch said...

Thanks Amanda for tutorial .. i wanna ask, can i delete letter :
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}} {\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1507;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 \par }

Before redirect to my www. site.

8 March 2009 07:51 janmck said...

waw many thanks amanda! i could have never done that alone! thanks for your help!

17 May 2009 12:22 olegb said...

thanks, amanda, for your advices
that really helped me, now I have my site up and running ;)

1 June 2009 15:09 eskimo said...

you can't use this in blogger? you can't add meta http-equiv="refresh"....

:( any other way

5 June 2009 08:34 Susith De Silva said...

Good post for blogger redirection..

http://sanhidainfo.blogspot.com/

8 June 2009 16:01
Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for all of your guidance on using GoDaddy. It has been so great to use a custom domain and do a redirect page.

Question for you - with the free hosting they offer there are ads at the top of the redirect page. Any way around that?

Maybe by replacing the welcome.html?

Also, any pointers to good sites to see a list of html options for fonts, colors, etc.?

Thanks so much!!

19 September 2009 14:54 vineeth said...

Thank you for your tip
it was successful in my blog
thanking you again

22 April 2010 12:32 Srini said...

Hi Amanda:
Thanks for excellent instructions. I have already done the 301 redirect (Steps one and two & three). However, in step 4, you are asking for saving index file. What is this file? How do you create this file? Is it the sitemap.xml? Can you please elaborate?
Thanks very much
Srini

3 June 2010 11:35 David.kansal said...

nice post. but i have a question. suppose i upload a file http://theCisco.Net/abc.pdf

Then would i be able to download that file after making this redirection??

22 September 2010 02:18
Mimi said...

Hi Amanda!! Oh my goodness! Thank you so much for sharing this. I have been trying to do this for like 7 months and finally I found your site. I had the sam issue with Mike in wanting to redirect blog to site and vice versa. And with your instructions to was able to get it. Thanks a billion!!!!

20 December 2010 15:19 Sell Property Quickly said...

"meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8;" I learned another bit of HTML, thank you Amanda. If I ever need a redirect page now I know just how to do it.

18 January 2011 15:31 ibn Adam said...

guys, use this method. this is easy. :D

http://reviewofweb.com/how-to/redirect-blogger-pages-to-another-page-or-blog/

24 January 2011 02:22 find real estate agents said...

I had the same issue with this one for about several months now and i was relieved when i saw your blog. Thanks so much for sharing!

8 February 2011 05:11 malaysiareform said...

Amanda, is this post for bloggers who are not using blogspot blogs who create custom domain? I thought when one convert a blogspot blog to custom domain, Blogger will do the redirct for us to the new URL without us having to do anything?

25 April 2011 17:57 Sell House Quickly said...

Sometimes after you setup and use Blogger for some time you get more adventurous and buy your own domain, then it is time for this redirect.

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10 October 2011 16:39 yblinx said...

i need complete sitemap like index for my blog posts. there are more than 4000 posts, i can't get it via any proper means.
help me create a sitemap code so that i can create a page with posts categorized by labels.
my blog here: www.mobilemoviesite.com
hope you help me resolve this mess.
Best Regards

29 October 2011 11:03 egypt news said...

its work for me very thanks

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