: Change domain name without changing host/server I want to change a website's domain name and while looking up best practices, the resources I read assume I'm moving the website to a new server

@Deb1703797

This sounds more complicated than needed. Just get your domainB and make that an alias (CNAME) of your current domain, your whole site will now be reachable without any extra work (and no downtime at all).

At this point both work, which you dont want to like thís. The moment it works, set you canonical to the domainB, and build the 301-header in your .htaccess (this is important SEO wise! This way you pass most of the SEO value to your new domain). Also, don't forget your Google Analytics, you need to inform them of domainchanges (there's plenty of documentation about this).

After some time you can change your DNS, make domainB the A-record and make domainA the alias. This also involves no downtime, the outside world won't notice a thing.

When that's done and you've waited a fair amount of time, you can remove domainA from your DNS, completing the move.

Please note: It does not harm you if you have two domains, as long as your canonical and 301-headers and all settings keep pointing to domainB, don't let them mark you as duplicate (which, if it happens, is fixable).
I suggest you keep domainA active as alias for as long as the domainname is live. Some users might've bookmarked the old url, give them time to update :)

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