Redirect old domain backlinks to new domain

Question

I am releasing an updated version of one of my websites soon on a new domain name and I was wondering how I can make it so that the old urls point to my new website as it has quite a lot of valuable backlinks.

I have read about how to make it 301 redirect in .htaccess but I need something a bit more advanced as some of my url structures have changed. See the examples below.

olddomain.com
newdomain.com 
- These will do just fine with the 301 redirect

olddomain.com/author/username
newdomain.com/user/username
- Different URL structure but I want the old urls to redirect towards the new url

olddomain.com/add
newdomain.com/submit
- Different page name for the same functionaly, would like to have these redirect correctly as well

I have no clue how to go about creating these last two redirects so if anyone could point me into the right direction that would be great! :)

Answer 1

Put this code in your DOCUMENT_ROOT/.htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ http://newdomain.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^author/([^/]+)/?$ http://newdomain.com/user/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^add/?$ http://newdomain.com/submit [R=301,L]

Answer 2

Have you tried using RedirectMatch ?

In the htaccess file in your olddomain.com document root (it must be different from your newdomain.com root):

RedirectMatch 301 ^/author/(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/user/$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/add(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/submit$1
Redirect 301 / http://newdomain.com/