Redirecting my site.

[VistaXP]

I'm in the making of changing my sites name and address to a .com, how can i do this without losing visitors or confusing people on my new domain. i already signed for many things with the old subdomain i use with topsites and such, what's the best option. site is http://openlite.5gigs.com

p.s how do i tell my affiliates and such to change their link address to the new one if they hardly come online anymore?

thanks.

[exam]

So your old site is at a free domain/hosting place? or do you actually own the domain for it?

[VistaXP]

no i don't own 5gigs, i'm using there free subdomain hosting. i want to chane it to ex. openlitebt.com

[bentong]

add an htaccess and do a 301 redirection..

[exam]

Will 5gigs allow you to control your .htaccess file? Can you do php scripting? If not, you'll probably have to compromise with a "moved" page that redirects via meta refresh or JS after 5 seconds, although this is not optimal for the search engines.

[VistaXP]

yeah, i believe they do let me control .htaaccess. will this way be quicker in redirecting.

[exam]

You can do a mod_rewrite rule to redirect all your pages to the same page on your new domain, if you have access to the .htaccess file.