How NOT To Do a Domain Change
General April 7th, 2008
Over the weekend I changed the main domain for my blog from thechrisblackwell.com to chrisblackwell.org, and I have given everyone a perfect case study of what NOT to do. I originally registered thechrisblackwell.com because chrisblackwell.com was already taken along with a few other variations. However, I was starting to get too many questions on why I had “the” so I decided to go with a .org domain and simply have my name. The problem is the domain change, and how I went about switching them, was an absolute disaster!
I lost all my subscribers and comments!
When I made the domain change I immediately went to FeedBurner to update the domain and feed details. The next morning when I checked by feed subscription numbers, I got a big surprise when I saw a 0 staring back at me. I posted a small test post, waited an hour, then checked my Google Reader to see if the feed was still being updated. Nope! My Google Reader didn’t see the new post and was still linking to the old domain.
So I’ve lost all my subscribers to my blog that I’ve spent months building up. Well, at least it can’t get any worse, right? Wrong! As I started looking around my blog I started to notice something very quickly. No Comments! I still don’t know what happened to all my comments, but they got all deleted in the move somehow. I am very upset by this as I cherish all my comments and some readers had some very informative information and links.
Hopefully these are all the problems and nothing else will or can go wrong. If you have posted a comment on my blog before, you have my sincerest apologies. Please subscribe again to my blog and help me recover some of what I have lost. Thank you everyone for your kind patience and understanding.
I’m sorry to read that, Chris!
I’m also puzzled about the loss of subscribers, one of the main feature of feedburner should be the domain independence of the feed!
Maybe it’s only a matter of time, I’ve subscribed your feed again anyway.
The vanishing of all the comments it’s also strange… something wrong in the DB backup and/or restore maybe…
Carry on, and keep up the good work.
Chris, I hate to hear that. I’m subscribing to your feed again, and I hope that everything will work out for you in time. Good luck to you with that! Cheers.
This is one of those times it would be nice to have a database compare tool. The tool would have a screen on the left with your old domain name (database) and all the posts and a screen on the right showing your new domain name and all the posts.
Don’t see any comments on the right side (new domain), click on the post on the left side that has all the comments and “whoosh” everything moves automagically from the left screen to the right.
Hopefully your feedburner will update soon.
That’s why I don’t dare to change. I’m sorry about your dear lost ones !
You are tagged. Please go to my blog- Random Thoughts, and read my latest post “10 Reasons Why I Blog.” After reading it, please make your on post on “10 Reasons Why I Blog,” then copy the tagboard after the meme and add your name next to mine. Then tag as many persons as you could, giving them these same instructions. Please copy and include the tagboard after your meme and instruct those you will tag to do the same. This will ensure a tremendous surge in the number of traffic and viewers in our respective blogs. Do this and see how traffic and viewership figures in your blog increase exponentially. Thank you very much and God bless.
that’s really bad ,
i think it’s the worst thing that might happen to a blog
beside getting down for over 2 days .
looks like you’ll have to start over.
goodluck
Wow. That is a scary thought. I was thinking of changing my “name” too. Maybe I should just buy a different domain and make a carbon copy or something…?
Thanks for the tip!
At least by writing about our mistakes we can help prevent others from falling into the same trap!
Maybe someone needs to write a book called: ‘1,001 Stupid Things To Avoid Online’?
I could probably contribute 998 of them myself
Have a great weekend!
Chris, did you change hosts as well or just your domain name? If you did change hosts, did you make a backup copy of the database? Maybe something didn’t restore.
However, if all you updated was the domain and the DNS entries, I would expect everything is still there but might not be linked properly.
I did a domain change and my server just yesterday! I went from .nl to .net but I didn’t lose any comments! I had made an export from my old database and put that in my new database!
About the feed.. I didn’t had that much subscribers, but I think that I’ve lost some of them! But that’s something that you can’t do anything about!!
Anyway, nice blog!
Damn man… that’s tough, sorry to hear that man. I’m curious, how many subscribers did you have before?
Jay
Wow…I would go mad. Nice of you though sharing to make people aware.
All the best with the rebuilding…