Move Forum To New Domain While Keeping URL Structure

[Davey-UK]

I've done a lot of searching to find an answswr to this, but with no definitive answer from what i can see.
My situation:
My forum is currently in the forums subdirectory on abc.com. Example abc.com/forums
The threads and posts urls have the format of

https://abc.com/forums/threads/is-this-still-normal.12345/#post-17890123

I am wanting to move the forums to a completely new domain, still in a /forums sub directory, but on a different server.
We have a very good ranking on google, and wouldnt want to drop too many ranks because of the move if possible.

If i were to leave the old domain on the old server and place a htaccess redirect in there, can anyone tell me if it is possible to keep the thread/post format in the url structure when redirecting to the new domain, so as not to break the sequence.
For example

https://newdomain.com/forums/threads/is-this-still-normal.12345/#post-17890123

Any help on the htaccess code required would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Paul B]

If only the domain is changing then you would just do a catch all 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain.

 

[Davey-UK]

If only the domain is changing then you would just do a catch all 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain.

Thanks for such a swift reply. So the following code should do the trick, and redirect the old domain links directly to the same thread on the new domain?

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^abc.com [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.abc.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newdomain.com/$1 [L, R=301,NC]

Thanks again

 

[Davey-UK]

Just an update on this one, and please help if anyone has an answer
I have put the following in the root of my old domain, which is forwarding correctly to newdomain.com/forums
BUT, when clicking on old links from the old domain in Google search, they only go to the same /forums and not to the actual post in the search listings.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.oldomain\.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ https://newdomain.com/forums [R=301,L]

Now if i use the following code example, the Google links work perfectly, BUT obviously the /forums redirection is now taken out, where that is where i need it to redirect if someone simply types olddomain.com in the address bar and not from a google link.
Is there any way of combining the two?

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.oldomain\.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ https://newdomain.com [R=301,L]

If anyone could help in the slightest it would be very much appreciated.

 

[dknife]

You're missing the /$1 from your saturday example post which appends the full path from the clicked URL to the new URL. You should also keep the NC flag so it's case insensitive.