depreciated domain redirect

I have two domains one a .com and one a .net both pointing to the same site.

I want to phase out the .com in favor of the .net, but the .com has higher page rank in google.

So can I get

www.mydomain.com/somedir/thisfile.php
to change to
ww.mydomain.net/somedir/thisfile.php

In any easy way? Someone mentioned mod_rewrite to me, but my brain near exploded when I tried to read the documentation.

If you phase out one of the domains, then the registrar will no longer resolve that name. Once its gone, its gone, and there isnt a way to point to it anymore, because it doesnt resolve. mod_rewrite, is really more for things under your domain level. It will take it a few weeks, but your page rank should increase again.

You really should return a 301 Moved Permanently HTTP response. I'm not sure the easiest way to do it for an entire domain though, probably a directive in your server configuration file.

Thanks guys. I want to keep the domain - just to prevent competitors from piggybacking on our brand.

I came up with pointing the .com domain to a subdomain and then using an htaccess containing

Redirect 301 / http://www.mydomain.net/

When I asked my hosting company to comment, they said what's the difference? It's a redirect to a redirect - but I thought there may be value in the 301 - permenantly moved code being returned.

I have seen other sites do similar things.

Do you think it's worth it still?

Since your basic concern is to keep your pagerank in google as high as possible, I'd say it's a question for them. If you get an answer, please post it here though.