Moving a Joomla site to a new domain without losing your URLs

Copying files and a database is the easy half. The half that costs you traffic is the URLs, and it is worth planning before you touch anything.

Write down what you have first

Before the move, get a list of the URLs that actually matter. Your analytics will tell you which pages get traffic; that list is usually much shorter than the sitemap. Those are the ones that must not break.

Turn on the redirect handling

Joomla ships a redirect manager (com_redirect) and a matching System - Redirect plugin. Enable the plugin. From then on, every 404 is recorded in the redirect manager with the URL that was asked for, and you can point it somewhere sensible in two clicks.

That turns the migration into something you can work through: launch, watch the 404 list fill up for a few days, resolve the ones with real traffic behind them.

Do not rely on it for the important ones

The redirect manager only catches a request after it has already 404'd. For URLs you know are changing, put a proper 301 in your web server config or .htaccess instead. It is faster and it does not depend on a plugin staying enabled.

Settle the URL shape once

Half of all migration breakage comes from the URL format changing at the same time as the domain. Look at the System - SEF plugin before you go live. It controls whether URLs get a trailing slash, whether index.php is forced in, and how strictly Joomla treats a URL that does not match the expected shape.

Whatever you pick, pick it before launch and leave it alone. Changing the trailing slash setting a month later quietly doubles every URL on the site.

The bits people forget

• configuration.php holds $live_site, $log_path and $tmp_path. All three carry the old absolute paths.
• Absolute links inside article bodies still point at the old domain. A find and replace across #__content sorts it, but take a backup first.
• The old domain should keep answering, with a 301 to the new one, for at least a year. It is the cheapest part of the whole move.

Afterwards

Give it a week, then look at the redirect manager again. A long tail of odd 404s from bots is normal. A cluster of 404s on one URL pattern means you missed a rule.