This is almost comical but I'm stuck at this point. Here's the situation:
current host: no root access, can really only work in .htaccess
current host: site to be moved to new host is on a shared IP address
current host: site has .htaccess redirecting all non-www traffic to www.
new host: root access, WHM, all the knobs/dials
new host: mod_userdir is disabled
OK. So, at the current host I can't add an .htaccess redirect like this:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://1.2.3.4/~accountname/$1 [R=301,L]
since mod_userdir is disabled at the new host -- and I'm told that enabling it is not exactly simple. So that IP address and account name will not resolve.
Great - so at the new host let's put the site at a dedicated IP address. Nope,that won't work either because the .htaccess rule that rewrites all traffic to "www." means it will break - you get this:
www.1.2.3.4 -- server DNS address could not be found.
I'm afraid to turn off that "www." rewrite rule because it was put in place years ago and I'm not sure what might break if it's not there.
So at this point I see no way to move this site and have the old site redirect to the new site. I have TTL set very low so I am going to have to count on the global DNS caches refreshing in a reasonable amount of time (I can tolerate 24 hours).
My head hurts. Am I missing anything or should I just go with the game plan to move the site and not even attempt to do the redirect from the old location?