Conceptual help with converting an html site to WP

  • Resolved shellrene

    (@shellrene)


    12 years, 8 months ago

    One site I have is a very old html site (pre-google days) with over a thousand pages. Someone else has been dealing with it for all that time and it does contribute the majority of sales to our business. Traffic has fallen off this Spring and if we’re going to have to go do another round of band-aid fixes to all pages which it probably needs, we probably should just deal with overhauling the whole thing. It needs it, we’ve been putting it off for years.

    I’ve used WP for other sites (probably 10 sites in the last few years) so I’m not new but I’m not an expert either.

    In planning a conversion of that site to WP…

    I don’t need it to look like the old site.
    I will not have the same file structure and will redirect almost all old html pages (ick, tedious but necessary).
    I don’t really have to worry about duplicate content. It will be set up differently.
    I need to do everything possible to be concerned about the least impact on our business that I can. This is probably the most critical issue.

    In the reading I’ve done it looks to me like the best options are to…

    1. Install WP and develop the site within a subdirectory of the original site. Switch it over to WP when it’s done with development.

    PLUS: can keep original domain
    MINUS: can’t do a gradual switchover (which I would think could impact traffic negatively) unless we add pages to existing html site menu as we go along and then have to deal with making the designs work as one

    2. Install WP on a new domain and redirect html site pages when we’re comfortable with traffic levels at new site

    PLUS: no impact on existing traffic/business
    MINUS: another domain name
    _______________________________________________________

    Am I evaluating this correctly? Am I missing a good option? Do either of these have major impacts I haven’t considered? I’ve thought about it in too many different ways that I don’t think I’m thinking clearly any more…

    Thanks for any advice you can share…

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • I think that option #1 is your best bet.

    Changing domains can be confusing for your customers, especially if they aren’t all that tech-savvy.

    You could do a gradual switchover, but it depends on how you’ve structured the links and menus on your original site. However, it might be easier for your customers if you did all the work behind the scenes and rolled it out all at once (all the while feeding them hints about what is to come down the road in order to build excitement).

    I have done this on numerous occasions. It is not hard at all- nerve wracking, but not hard. Leave the original site where it is. Develop the new site in a subfolder that I will ingeniously call subfolder.

    When you are happy with it, delete the old site (this is very terrifying- but I assume you will download a copy first for good luck)

    Move the WordPress site into the root folder. In another tab, have the cpanel open and go to phpMyAdmin. Open up yoursite_wrdp1 and click on wp_options.

    There are two things you want to change- the site url and blog name
    https://yoursite.com/subfolder to https://yoursite.com
    and
    yoursite.com/subfolder/ to yoursite.com

    Make sure if you use contact form plug-ins that the emails are ok..

    I think that is about it!!

    If you have folders with lots of pdf’s or forms, save yourself hours of time by leaving them in their original folders and do not delete them. Just make the links from WordPress NOT to the media library, but to the external folders where they were already stored and make it open in a new window.

    Thread Starter shellrene

    (@shellrene)

    Thank you kjodle and Sharon for your comments. I appreciate the help.

    Sharon, did you see an impact on traffic to those sites when you’ve done this before? Obviously, I think long term the site would be much better so traffic would increase, but I can’t afford a short or medium term significant drop.

    To be honest, Shellrene, I have done this for small business, not for a large site such as yours. The thing to do would probably be to leave your important pages there with a redirect for several weeks? There is a lot of advice on line about that about using 301 redirects. Here is something from Google that is helpful:
    https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

    I have to do this whole thing for myself, my own website being over 5 years old, so I do know how this feels!!

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    #1 is the best one ?? The 301 redirects will be the easiest thing, too.

    I would even go so far as naming my new pages similar to the old.

    So if I have domain.com/about.html then I make a page named /about/ and use a rule to redirect all pages ending in .html to go to just the page itself, ending in /

    No traffic loss.

    Thread Starter shellrene

    (@shellrene)

    hmmmmm….thanks Mika…there were things about the original urls I really don’t like, so I was going to clean them up and make them more user friendly. But I was actually just re-examining that decision.

    Ipstenu, someone told me that for permalinks I could use
    /%postname%/.html

    but I have not tried it. Would that work?

    Shellrene, here is a free webinar you might want to see. https://www.prweb.com/releases/freeseo/webinar/prweb9684639.htm

    Install WP on a new domain and redirect html site pages when we’re comfortable with traffic levels at new site

    [ link removed ]

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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