Enforced Name Change Ahead.

I may soon be faced with the problem of having to change domain name. As I base all my seo around google I felt this to be the place to ask. How much of a problem could the domain name change be to my site ? I will still own the original domain and will be able to redirect it to the new one. What will be the impact on PR and Traffic ? will any problems be long or short term ?

Other questions I have are :

How easy is it to implement a 301 on the domain change ? Is it a matter of having to redirect every page and sub folder etc within the htaccess or is there 1 command that will redirect every page to the relevant page on the new domain. No file names will be changed at all.

If someone could offer some thoughts on this it would be appreciated, as I am sure you will understand it is a time of concern for me.

If you are not changing the file and folders names, then you have to use just one line command in your.htaccess file of the old website:

redirect 301 http://www.your-new-site.com/

In this way you can redirect the entire website.I don't think there should be any impact on the traffic but you won't get page rank on your new website instantly.