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Questions on morphing a static site into a WP blog Help please

by DeePower
4 replies
I have some older -- like 5, 6, and 7 year old static sites that I'm updating. I'm thinking of changing them to WP blogs so they'll be mobile compliant and look fresh. Right now they look rather dated.

Will I lose any DA or pagerank? The url stays the same. If it was www.ilovedogs. com it will stay www.ilovedogs. com

Most of the sites have quite a few pages. Should I link to those pages in their old html static code from the home page -- maybe in the footer? The pages look outdated and would contrast with the cleaner look of the blog. Or should I post the info from each page as a blog post and backdate, then delete the old page?

What is the quickest way to get each blog post indexed?

Dee
#blog #morphing #questions #site #static
  • Profile picture of the author Steve B
    Dee,

    I faced the same thing, and in my experience at least, it was easiest just making a clean break, i.e. not doing any re-directing.

    I just copied the pages of the old web site that I wanted to keep for content and kept those pages in a file on my computer.

    Then I nuked the old site, replaced it with a fresh copy of WordPress, then copied and pasted the old content into posts (not pages) on the new site. The WP "pages" tend to remain fairly static (like about me, policies, contact, etc.) Of course, you'll want to group your posts into WP "categories" for better organization.

    It does take some work, but for my purposes, it turned out well. When you copy and paste your old content into the WP posts, you'll probably have to do some minor formatting and cosmetic "sprucing up" to make the posts look good.

    The downside to this method is that your incoming links from the old site will be lost unless the pages are named the same as the old site. In my case, that was not a problem. But if you have tons of solid inbound links then some redirecting may be in order.

    The best to you,

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve L
    Originally Posted by DeePower View Post

    I have some older -- like 5, 6, and 7 year old static sites that I'm updating. I'm thinking of changing them to WP blogs so they'll be mobile compliant and look fresh. Right now they look rather dated.

    Will I lose any DA or pagerank? The url stays the same. If it was www.ilovedogs. com it will stay www.ilovedogs. com

    Most of the sites have quite a few pages. Should I link to those pages in their old html static code from the home page -- maybe in the footer? The pages look outdated and would contrast with the cleaner look of the blog. Or should I post the info from each page as a blog post and backdate, then delete the old page?

    What is the quickest way to get each blog post indexed?

    Dee
    Are the sites broken? I mean, sure they could probably look better but are they still generating revenue for you?
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    • Profile picture of the author irawr
      Banned
      I would just hire a web designer and stick with the static pages. If the site appearance is out dated, then fix the problem. I wouldn't migrate static sites to wordpress unless WP was the solution. It doesn't sound like it is in this situation. This way there's basically no risk, you have 100% complete control over the site url, structure, and obviously you keep all that stuff identical. If the new site is responsive this could improve site rankings and you don't have to deal with all the insane nonsense wordpress does like tags and duplicate content.

      Edit: also if you wanted to migrate to wordpress this is how I would do it and have fun, WP IS FUN... Just kidding I can't stand it. If you're on windows find your hosts.ini and add your domain and direct it to 127.0.0.1. (Note you will not be able to access your remote site until you remove it.) Install wamp or some other simple apache server kit. Get the site 100% set up on your local machine, I mean perfect, make sure your urls are completely reproduced 100% the same, make sure there's no duplicate content, and definitely turn the tags off. Then you can just back it up locally, remove the entry in hosts.ini, MOVE YOUR EXISTING SITE to somewhere outside the WWW folder (you can just move it back if this get's screwed up) install wordpress on the remote server, install the backup plugin and upload your site. If this is done correctly your down time will be very minimal.
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