How to do a .htaccess 301 redirect
When you’re about to redirect your content to a new server or to a new domain you should not mix it up with changing your file structure at the same time. This is very important. If you change your domain name and your catalog structure at the same time you will have a whole mess to cover, especially if you are moving servers at the same time.
You should redirect one step at the time and carefully disect whether or not additional changes have to be made. Perhaps you don’t need to do something, but it would look neat. Please keep those changes to the very minimum and think of functionality, SEO value etc. before making your changes.