Question

I am much more of a programmer than a server guru so any help is much appreciated!

Forwarding a domain name for SEO reasons ->
NewDomain.com hosted with 3rd party needs to point to currently hosted site CurrentDomain.com. I know I need to…

1) Adjust NewDomain.com DNS A records specifically

• www.
• @.
• *.
• ftp.
• mail.

2) Adjust NewDomain.com DNS MX records

3) Add 301 Redirect to .htaccess file hosted at CurrentDomain.com so all requests for NewDomain will be forwarded to CurrentDomain.com.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} NewDomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://CurrentDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]


THE QUESTIONS:
What else needs to be done?
1) Is something missing?
2) Should additional DNS changes be made? If so, where?
3) Should MX record point to mail.CurrentDomain.com if I don’t want mail to NewDomain?
4) Is there a better .htaccess file?

Answer 1

Your .htaccess is almost right, just minor corrections:

Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on

# for http
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?newdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://CurrentDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# for https
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?newdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =443
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://CurrentDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

That way newdomain.com or www.newdomain.com will both be redirected with 301 to the browsers.

[NC] flag is for ignore case matching of host