Yes, you can easily redirect a WordPress blog by a trick – edit or replace the website’s index.php file (the one at the root of the blog – NOT the theme’s). Use this code:

<?php
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' );
header('Location: http://egwebsite.com/newpage.htm');
?>

What it does is relocate ALL blog pages to the new single blog page (HTML, PHP, WP, etc.) on the new site. Note it doesn’t transfer Admin pages, or any other content on your site – just WP blog pages.

Why? Several reasons:

• Politeness. If you close off a site, why not be polite and warn people? A site abruptly disappearing is confusing, especially if it’s from a search engine link. It also gives you a chance to catch visitors, for example to redirect them somewhere useful.
• Search. Speaking of search engines, this tells them you are will redirect permanently all old links from the old site to one new page. Knowing that, the search engines will transfer the links over.
• Cleanliness. If you’re selling a domain, it can be fun to say ‘it has 3,000 links’, but the fact is, unless the buyer is getting the site itself, the links are worthless and will shortly disappear. Be nice, be clean, and transfer relevant links ahead of time, so everyone knows what they are getting.

Of course, this technique is specific to WordPress – for other sites with non-WordPress content, you’d be better to use an .htaccess edit to get all pages – but if it’s just a WP site, it’s a great way to sign off…