Have you ever used any online tools to benchmark your website performance? You must have come across tools like Pingdom, GTmetrix, Google page insight, and many more.

These tools analyze web pages and prepare a report on the current page performance and tell you which part of your page is working fine and where you need to put some extra attention. These recommendations are best practices established by Google to help build a website for optimal front-end performance.

While testing your site using these tools you might come across the “use cookie-free domains” recommendation. Previously, I have published an article on how to avoid cookies in a domain by setting up a separate subdomain to serve cookie-free contents, using a CDN, and using the WP2Static WordPress plugin. 

However, in this article, you will go through the tutorial on how to set up a cookie-free domain using the WPRockt caching plugin.

What makes page performance optimization important?

Optimizing page performance is important and one of the factors used by Google’s algorithm to rank pages. It’s been an official signal from Google and you definitely want to strictly follow their guidelines to remain on top of the competition.

Not only that there are additional reasons for improving your page load time. 

1. A slow page means the search engine crawler will cover fewer pages using the allocated crawl memory budget.
2. Fewer crawls mean your website is getting less indexation.
3. Slow page negatively impacts user experience and increases page bounce rate.
4. Most importantly, a longer loading time affects goal conversion too. 

What does this “use cookie-free domain” recommendation refer to? 

An HTTP cookie is a packet of data that holds information about a particular client and can be used repeatedly. But if a page has some static content for example a static image, the browser will include those cookies while requesting for the static image. In such a condition, the web server ignores the cookies and thus they prove to be useless network traffic.

So to avoid sending unnecessary cookie requests performance checker tools recommend you to send cookie-free requests by creating a subdomain and hosting the static components there.

How does a cookie-free domain help in performance improvement?

Typically most of the websites have static information such as images, CSS files, JS files, etc. By configuring a domain that doesn’t set cookies to its content you are reducing the number of incoming requests to the server. 

Technically, reducing the HTTP request count required to render a particular page preserves bandwidth, improves server response time by delimiting extra bytes of data transmission, as well as improves overall page loading time. 

Since almost all performance checking tools recommend you to lower the total request count to render a page, serving cookie-free content is a win-win step towards that. Although you might not notice any performance grade improvement after serving cookie-less contents, it does impact mainly on the total load time and request count of a webpage.

How to set up a cookie-free domain using the WP Rocket plugin

WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin, arguably the best caching plugin available for WordPress. This plugin has a wide range of features and automatic optimization that makes it handy for both experienced and beginner WordPress users.

WP Rocket ensures your site load extremely fast, follows the lighthouse guidelines while the configuration is the easiest to set up.

Advantage of WProcket:

1. Quick configuration.
2. Powerful caching for better web performance (cache preloading, browser caching, lazy loading).
3. CDN integration, Database optimization.
4. Javascript, CSS compression, Easy generation of critical CSS.
5. Excellent community support.
6. Ecommerce and multilingual compatibility.

As we have discussed earlier, we are going to set up the WP Rocket plugin in WordPress and use its CDN feature to serve all the URLs of static files that will be rewritten to a particular CNAME of your choice.

The reason for implementing CDN to ignore cookies is that many CDN providers can strip cookies and thus it prevents the browser from receiving cookie response headers as well as including cookies along with HTTP requests.

Note: You can use any CDN you prefer for example RocketCDN, BunnyCDN, KeyCDN, etc. But with Cloudflare, you won’t be able to avoid cookies because Cloudflare injects a cookie called “_cfduid” in HTTP headers since they implement reverse proxy strategy and thus cookies are sent for all types of files.

#1. Install WP Rocket Plugin

Before installing WProcket you would need to purchase it from the official website. It comes with three pricing plans single, plus, and infinite.

• Single – $49 (One year of support and updates for 1 website)
• Plus – $99 (One year of support and updates for 3 websites)
• Infinite – $249 (One year of support and updates for unlimited websites)

Once you purchase the plugin go to your WordPress dashboard and click on add new plugin. You need to upload the zip file to WordPress and complete the installation. Don’t forget to activate the plugin after a complete installation and you will be good to go.

Tip: In case you don’t want to get yourself in these hustles and want everything to be set up I would recommend speedy site service. This service is designed to help people optimize their sites for upcoming core web vital updates and a lot of people already enrolled their sites into it. Along with the service, your site will receive a premium copy of the WP Rocket plugin fully configured to load your site faster. The service’s price point is very friendly plus I will provide you an additional $50 off coupon, which will make things much easier on your side – SPEEDY50.

Now on your WordPress dashboard menu expand settings and click on WP Rocket. 

It will take you to the WP Rocket dashboard. The dashboard contains a menu on the left where you can explore the features and configuration categories. On the right-hand side, you will notice the actual settings for each feature WP Rocket has. 

Check this image below: 

#2. Configure CDN in WP Rocket

On the WP Rocket dashboard click on the CDN option available on the left menu. You will see the option to enable the content delivery network setting and CNAME(s) configuration along with file type control.

For exception, you can exclude URLs of files that should not get served via CDN. You can ask for individual file exclusion or wildcard exclusion by using the (.*) command.

Now that you have the plugin ready to set up CNAME let’s understand what CNAME is and how it works. Next, you can use CNAME from any CDN to serve cookieless contents for the website’s static files.

How CNAME works?

The Canonical Name Record is a type of resource record in the DNS that maps one domain name to another canonical name. This can prove convenient when running multiple services together. 

Technically, while the user’s web browser requests for content to a server, its DNS resolver will forward the request to the server asking for the resources. If it finds a CNAME then the request goes to that canonical address asking for the contents of the website. And according to the request, the contents get served from the canonical address to the visitor’s browser.

The image below explains it properly:

#3. Create your CNAME using a CDN service 

Using RocketCDN:

Now you know what CNAM will do. It’s time to create the address using a CDN service provider. WP Rocket has its content delivery network called RocketCDN. It’s super easy to configure and you don’t need to struggle with complicated settings to initialize the service. 

It’s a premium CDN that costs around $7.99/month. You will notice a banner inside your WP Rocket CDN configuration panel to activate Rocket CDN.

The integration process is cool, all you have to do is enter your domain and it will automatically import files from your WordPress site using the pull zone. 

Next, you need to check the Content Delivery Network setting in WP Rocket and copy the CNAME provided by RocketCDN and enter it into the CDN CNAME textbox in WP Rocket.

Using KeyCDN:

KeyCDN is a great option to serve cookieless domains too. You can deploy KeyCDN to your WordPress site using the CNAME settings of the WP Rocket plugin. But before that, you need to follow the steps below to create a Zone URL in KeyCDN.

Step 1: First, go to the KeyCDN official website and create an account. You can start with a trial account or buy credit to start using the service.

Step 2: Now create a PULL ZONE inside the KeyCDN dashboard and save it.

(I’m using the same image I have used in the previous article to describe how it can be done), check this below;

Step 3: Wait for the zone to be deployed, it can take a couple of minutes to complete the process.

Step 4: Copy the zone URL and paste it on your WP Rocket’s CNAME field. While using the CDN address you can set the type of files to be served. You can set it to all files, CSS & JS, CSS alone, or JS alone. Just make sure you have selected what types of content you want to serve without cookies. Alternatively, you can set it to all files (default setting).

Step 5: Once done, save the setting and you are all set.

It can take a couple of minutes up to an hour to see the improvement but that will help you to stop cookies from being served with browser requests. 

Wrapping up: 

Manually configuring a subdomain to serve cookie-free contents takes a lot of configuration to be done which can end up causing errors to your site as well. The safest way to do it by using a caching plugin like WP Rocket and let the plugin & CDN handle all the technical works on behalf of you. 

Hope this post helps you, cheers.

Redirecting a domain name to another domain is simply pointing your old domain name to the new one. It’s more like an email forwarding to another person.

Literally, its a way of creating a procedure that all the visitors of one domain should be redirected to another domain name. It can be a new domain name or it can be an old domain name as well. All it required to two domains to redirect from one another.

Why Redirect Domain Name?

There are a couple of reasons to conduct a domain name redirection and your reason should be one among this list. Just try to find out all the possible reasons that may cause redirecting a domain to another.

Reasons For Domain Name Redirection

• You may want to create a better version of your brand.
• You may go under some kind of brand name violation (unknowingly) and later want to change it.
• Your previous domain name is too long and just wanna short it out.
• You have recently found an SEO optimized name which is more related to your niche and ability to create a huge impact on traffic.
• Or you might be doing some practice with your website how to migrate from one site to another with minimal SEO impact.

While any one of these can be a reason, the solution is going to be the same for WordPress sites. There are multiple solutions as well and each of them can be fit to solve the problem. Externally, there may be some advance reasons for what you need to take advance steps during redirection.

Few Things To Note

Again for different platforms, redirection procedures can be different. In this post, I will only write about some of the safe processes to apply domain redirection on the WordPress website. But before looking for the procedure you need to make sure that you are going to use all the same resources as posts, page, and images in the new domain.

If you don’t want to use previous resources on the new website then only 301 (permanent) redirect domain name will solve your issue. But, in case you would like to hold all the resources inside the new domain name, migrating the whole website will solve the issue.

# Remember that to migrate website or changing domain name it’s recommended to have both the address on live (available to visitors)

To migrate your WordPress website safely without missing any internal links use “all in one wp migration” plugin.

You can watch this video to follow the steps as well.

Steps To Redirect Domain Name To Another Domain Name

As I have said there are various way to do it, let’s have a look at the safest ways I have ever did it without facing any problem.

1. Migrate Your Website To The New Domain Name

The first part of domain name redirection starts with website migration. The best tool for a safe migration process is all-in-one wp migration. Install the plugin in both domains and activate it. (To use this plugin both domain should have WordPress installed)

Now from the old WordPress site dashboard go to “all in one wp migration” and click on export and select file.

After exporting the website now go to the new domain (WordPress and all in one plugin must install there). Click on Import and select the downloaded file from your local drive and upload. (It may take some time depending on your server speed and file size)

#Use a better hosting for WordPress.

Sometimes, you may get an upload data limitation error but installing this limit extender plugin will solve the issue.

Once the uploading is done you need to login to your WordPress dashboard in the new domain using the old password and user name. After login, change the permalink structure like the previous domain.

This migration will do almost 90% of the work of domain redirection. After migration, all your internal links will be assigned with the new domain name and hence you don’t need to update them manually. It’s a big time saver.

2. Redirect Domain Name With The Help Of [.htaccess] File

Now you need to redirect the domain name of the previous website to the new domain so that whenever someone comes to your old website he will be redirected to the same page on the new website.

It’s really essential because neither you want to show a 404 error to anyone nor take them to a different page with unrelated content. If your old website had lot’s of pages ranked on Google then applying 301 redirections to the same new page is very beneficial. It will save your rankings and produces almost equal traffic to the new domain.

Don’t you think it will bring quick growth to the new website? In my case, it happened. The new website grew even quicker than I thought.

So to apply the redirection using .htaccess file go to your default file manager from hosting or use any FTP clients. Find the .htaccess file. If hidden go to settings and click on SHOW HIDDEN FILES.

Now edit .htaccess and add the following code. (change your site URL in the code)

Redirect 301 / https://newsite.com/ 

Alternative code:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

Both the code should work. If one is not working well try another one.

3. Let Google Know That You Have Migrated To a New Domain

Now, this is a very important step if you want your new website to grow quickly and have very less SEO impact on site due to the migration + redirection. You need to tell Google that “Hey, I just changed my domain name to a new one. So please, prefer to index and rank my contents from the new website instead of the previous domain.”

When you do that Google will get informed and they will start there process to indexing + ranking the new domain for previously published articles or blog posts.

To let Google know, you must have verified both the domain name in your search console. If you don’t know how to verify your domain name check this article.

The change or domain or URL tool is not available in the new version of webmaster tool. You need to access the old version of Google webmaster. It’s easy to access, all you have to select the “old version” on the left bottom of the webmaster dashboard.

In the old version click on the gear icon on the top right corner and select “change of address“

Now provide the information Google is asking from you and click on submit. Once done they will start the procedure to change your domain records in their database.

For 3-4 days your old domain ranking may disappear from search engine but don’t worry all your ranking will be regained with your new fresh domain name.

Applying these steps to redirect a domain name to a new one is really essential in case of WordPress site and can save a lot of time, energy and effort.

If you have any query regarding this post please don’t hesitate to ask. As I have experienced bad situations of migration and redirection so I can help you more with this. Hope this article help you.

There may be certain times when you need to migrate your online business in terms of hosting and domain name. There may be a couple of reasons such as:

1. At some point, you may realize that the current domain is not the right domain for your website.
2. You could be facing some issues with your branding.
3. Or you could just want to give yourself a fresh start.

In such situations, most people find it difficult to migrate their website to a new host or using the same host while assigning a new domain name to it. Of course, it is a little bit complex task. Moreover, migrating your domain name could wipe out all the hard work you have done for your site’s SEO.

Most of the independent webmasters or businesses use WordPress nowadays. It’s efficient, easy and powerful as well. So in this article, I will go through step by step tutorial “how you can migrate your domain name easily”.

In the meantime, we have another crucial point to remember that we do not want to lose our search engine rankings + traffic while performing a migration.

So, before proceeding to the tutorial part let me tell you a few things that you should expect and follow during this migration process.

• Do not change your URL structure “permalink” so frequently. Changing your site URL structure will have a bad impact on your SEO since once you change the address people will no longer find the page from a search engine or any backlink.

• You should expect a drop in your current traffic for the first few days or maybe a week. The reason is that all your new posts and pages will be crawled under a separate name which will initially have a low domain authority of course.
• Make sure you do not delete the previous domain and keep the website live on that domain too. 

These are some points that you should take care of while migrating your domain name.

Now I am assuming that you have already bought a new domain name and assigned it with hosting nameserver.

From here you will start the process of migration so keep tracking your progress step by step.

#1. Backup Your Website’s Content

Backing up your site contents is very necessary. It will be beneficial for you because while migrating the domain name of your site if anything goes wrong you can immediately fix it by replacing with the backup files.

There are several ways to backup. You can use the hosting default quick site backup option or you can use a WordPress plugin like “all in one migration” or “updraft”.

I prefer to back up the “public_html” folder directly from the host and the database of the website as well. You can apply any method whichever option looks sweet to you. All it matters to have a backup of the site to prevent any data loss during the domain migration process.

* * Depending on the hosting these options may appear different but the work is the same.

#2. Upload the backup contents into your new hosting

Once you have completed the downloading of the backup file, now install WordPress in the new hosting. After installing WordPress open the file manager of new hosting. You can use the default file manager or any FTP client.

Now find the “wp-content” folder from the backup file > extract it and make a separate ZIP file.

Go ahead and upload that zip file into your new site. During the uploading process you will get a notification for replacing the existing contents. Click “replace” and your site content will be uploaded into the new site in a couple of minutes.

In the next step, you will need to upload your previous database into the new one simply by following the “import” technique. Read this guide to know how to do it.

Once your database is updated you can access your WordPress dashboard on the new address once you perform the later part of this tutorial.

#3. Update your site’s new address

Now it’s time to update your website address. First, go to Settings >> General.

Place your new domain URL in both the “WordPress address” and “Site Address”.

** To connect your host with the domain name you should make sure that you have updated the name servers.

Once you have changed the URL in general settings click on “save”, you may be required to wait ⅔ hours so for domain name connection. After ⅔ hours your domain nameserver change will propagate worldwide.

#4. Update the links in the website \

Once you have updated the new domain name in your WordPress, the next step is to update all kinds of internal links that are pointing to the older domain name. 

You need to replace all the links in CSS, Javascript, or maybe the links of your content. It can be a difficult task to do manually so you can take the help of a reliable WordPress plugin or WordPress command line.

One such plugin is Better Search and Replace. To use this plugin first install it from the WordPress repository.

1. Install Better Search and Replace plugin.
2. Go to tools > better search and replace settings
3. Type your old site URL address in “search for the box”.
4. Type your new site URL in the “Replace with” box.
   
   

   

5. Select all kinds of tables.
6. Check Replace GUIDs
7. Check Run as a dry run.
8. Run search/replace.

#5. Applying 301 redirects to the links

After updating the internal links of your site, the next step is the most important step in migrating your WordPress website’s domain name. Adding the 301 redirect means directing the traffic from your previous domain name to your new domain name.

** And this is the reason why you should not delete the old website while setting up the new website.

If you skip this step, you will ultimately lose all the backlinks linked with your website. This will obviously put a negative impact on the SEO of your website. Furthermore, if the visitors will click on the previous links on that website, it will drive them to nothing hence eventually generating broken links, generating 404 pages.

You should know that Google takes 404 Errors very seriously. If they encounter too many 404 errors – Google will penalize your rankings.

There are multiple ways to redirect your site links, you can use plugins or do it manually but doing so will be very painful. You can add 301 redirect links by adding them at the server level via htaccess too.

Another great and easy way to add 301 redirect links is with the help of Cloudflare. Follow the step in the image. 

Inside Cloudflare, create a “Page Rule” where each URL that matches “yourolddomain.com” is 301-redirected to “yournewdomain.com”.

#6. Update Your Website in Google Webmasters Tools

Once you are done with the redirection it’s time to inform Google that you are migrating to a new website. You can do this using the webmaster tool or currently known as the search console. You will need to send a request to Google regarding the change in the address of your previous domain. This way, Google will recognize that you have migrated to a new domain and will give you some SEO benefits.

** I am assuming your previous site as a verified property of the search console. If you have not verified yet make sure you do it.

First of all, you will need to verify your new website as a property. Once your site is verified go to change of address tool and select your previous website.

Once you have selected, in the next step you will need to pick your new site from the drop-down menu and then scan whether all the 301 redirections are working properly or not.

After that, the tool will confirm both the sites as verified and allow you to submit your new domain as a replacement to the old domain.

While doing so, if you use Google Analytics for tracking your site traffic then you should also create a new property in the analytics tool and connect the new domain with analytics.

#7. Do not forget to submit the sitemap

After submitting your domain change request, you will need to submit your new domain’s sitemap. Once the domain is verified in the webmaster tool you can easily submit your sitemap.

Having a sitemap will provide you additional SEO benefits. You want to keep updating the sitemap of your site too. A sitemap will support your website to get crawled quicker.

After the change of your domain name, it’s time to pay attention to minor details. Update the primary information present in all the plugins associated with your site. And, make sure to track the number of pages with 404 errors and fix them as soon as possible.

Final thoughts:

Following the above-mentioned steps, you can effortlessly migrate the domain name of your website without hurting the SEO of your site. Although we would recommend not changing the domain name unless it’s utterly essential.

Cheers…

Now that I have identified my audience and done keyword research it is time to pick my authority websites domain name. But first I want to look at what good website names have in common. (more…)