Help with transfering a website to Wordpress platform

by CarinN
6 replies
Hi all,

I have a client that has 2 websites and wants to switch to using Wordpress. I've been working on their SEO for the last couple of months and have achieved good rankings so I don't want to start over by copying and pasting the content to a theme in wordpress. I'd like to keep the url structure the same as well so I don't lose the links I've been building doing the seo work.

Does anyone know how to do this or know where to go to find out this info?

Thanks!
#platform #transfering #website #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    I don't think there is a product where everything you asked above would be answered...

    You may end up copy/pasting a lot, no matter what.
    The URL structure might be kept - depending on how they look like now in the original site. Not all URL structures can be 'converted' to WP urls. A .htaccess file may help achieving this.

    Not seeing the sites and not knowing their size and structure is difficult to be specific.
    Are they plain html sites?
    How many pages?
    Do you want to keep the design?
    Anything special on those sites?

    I may know how to do it but all the "info" is in my head
    (because every site that is converted is different, there is no general recipe...)
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    • Profile picture of the author CarinN
      Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

      I don't think there is a product where everything you asked above would be answered...

      You may end up copy/pasting a lot, no matter what.
      The URL structure might be kept - depending on how they look like now in the original site. Not all URL structures can be 'converted' to WP urls. A .htaccess file may help achieving this.

      Not seeing the sites and not knowing their size and structure is difficult to be specific.
      Are they plain html sites?
      How many pages?
      Do you want to keep the design?
      Anything special on those sites?

      I may know how to do it but all the "info" is in my head
      (because every site that is converted is different, there is no general recipe...)
      I can't believe I forgot to put the urls in the post, I know better than that! The two websites are beacon-harbor.com and marinercovemarina.com. We don't want to keep the design I'm more concerned about losing all the SEO juice and search engine rankings.

      There are not a ton of pages to worry about but enough to were I think I might want to hire someone to do all the work if I have to do it manually. Anybody know someone that does this on a regular basis?
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    I don't want to start over by copying and pasting the content to a theme in wordpress.
    Unfortunately, this is what you're going to have to do. There isn't an easy button.

    Clients are dumb... charge 'em $20 for each page you need to transfer.
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    I'm all about that bass.

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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    I just did exactly this recently with my small site.

    It was a LOT of work, but I did NOT lose any link juice and my new site looks even better than the old one.

    Basically I had to:

    1) Design a theme that looked similar to my old site. Used Artisteer for that.

    2) Learn how to use Wordpress. This took some time as the learning curve was huge.

    3) Learn all about plugins and which ones I need. This forum helped a lot with that and simple Google searches.

    4) Learn how to edit CSS code. All trial and error... and help from Mr Horvath.

    5) Copy and Paste all my content to new Wordpress Pages.... never using MS Word of course.

    6) Switch to a new host, (Hostgator) that could handle my new site. Best move I ever made!

    7) Transfer content from my old Blogger Blog to me new WP blog. Much easier than I thought using a WP plugin.

    8) Bang my head against the wall several times when things didn't come out the way I wanted. Well, I finally did get it right.

    Anyway, it was quite a process for me, but very much worth the hard work. Now I have a cool site and I ditched the "old newbie platform" and the $50 a month cost that went along with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author josefilo
    Hi Carin ,

    Please look at my offre here.
    http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors...er-server.html

    and contact me at hdmwcm@gmail.com

    i will be glad to help you to transfer your website in to Wp and keep the same url's.
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  • Profile picture of the author Quentin
    Just copy and paste into the new site with wordpress and do 301 redirects for the pages.

    Quentin
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