Stupid question - Switching from html site to WP

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Wiggy

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Mar 12, 2009
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www.workingclassfitness.com
Ok - I'm not a noob, but this is gonna be a real noob-type question. :banana_sml:

I've got a fairly old site that was originally designed in html with Dreamweaver. Over the years, I taught myself some basics of html and how to use this really old version Dreamweaver so that I could update it, do some redesigning, etc. Nothing amazing, but enough for what I needed.

html is just too big of a pain in the ass and I like using WP for a lot of reasons, so I wanna switch this site over.

I asked a buddy of mine and he said that I'd have to first install WP on the root domain. Then I'd have to actually go in and manually re-create each page in WP, as it would have a different url. (e.g. - site.com/article.shtml in html vs site.com/article in WP)

He then told me that after that, I would need to do a 301 from the original version of the page in html (site.com/article.shtml) to the new version in WP (site.com/article). Now this will be sort of a time-consuming pain in the ass as the site I wanna convert has over 100 pages, but the benefits WP will provide will really be worth it in the end, so I don't mind.

My issue is that this site relies on traffic via SEO, and I want to make FOR ABSOLUTE CERTAIN that google couldn't slap me with some sorta duplicate content penalty as now each page would be on my site 2x, albeit with the old ones 301d to the new ones.

A lot of my sites got nailed by Penguin, and this is my biggest money-maker/list-builder, so I can't afford for something unexpected to happen.

Is what I've been told so far on the up and up?

Is there a specific way or method I should do the 301, or would simply using the 301 redirect tool in my hosting company dashboard be fine?

Several of my inner pages rank for various terms - once I build the new version of the page and 301 it over, would I still keep my current ranking, only having my spot in google go from listing the old page (site.com/article.shtml) to listing the new one (site.com/article)?

And how do I get the site to recognize WP on the root domain? I have another old html site that I messed with a little on (it has no google ranking, so I was more free to play with this one). I installed WP on the root domain and duplicated the index page, but when I type in the site's url, it still goes to the html version. I'm sure I'm just missing something simple, but I have no idea what.

Any help would be appreciated. Using WP would make my site cleaner, better looking, run faster, and let me do a bunch of other cool stuff. But I'm paranoid at losing any ranking with a duplicate content penalty as I canNOT afford to lose anything with this site - as in I'm completely FUCKED if this site goes down.

Thanks.
 


You won't have duplicate content since your original site for all intents and purposes will not exist anymore, but rather will forward to the new site.
Just make sure that all your inner pages also point to the new domain and you're golden.
 
You're making it too complicated. Just set up the permalinks to match the old URL structure. Get that ".shtml" right in there. No 301 needed.

Code: 
 /%postname%.shtml

Of course you still need to add the posts into the database, use a WP theme, and all that.
 
Another possible thing you can try is to install WordPress on a sub directory. That way, you can keep the HTML pages as it is and add new content conveniently, using WordPress.

I did something similar to my site and found that the HTML pages continue to do well in Google, with the WordPress pages also ranking well as I generated new content.

Of course, this won't be an ideal situation if you want your website to have strong brand image, as people will often not like a site that has different looking pages.
 
I always do my best to preserve the structure because I've gotten mixed results with redirecting. If I were you I would do everything in my power to keep the URLs exactly the same - or at least as many as you can.

There are plugins for wordpress that allow you to append .html to the end of your URLs. I would see about modifying/making one that allows for shtml.
 
Elvis said:
You're making it too complicated. Just set up the permalinks to match the old URL structure. Get that ".shtml" right in there. No 301 needed.

Code: 
 /%postname%.shtml

Of course you still need to add the posts into the database, use a WP theme, and all that.
Click to expand...

omgyams said:
I always do my best to preserve the structure because I've gotten mixed results with redirecting. If I were you I would do everything in my power to keep the URLs exactly the same - or at least as many as you can.

There are plugins for wordpress that allow you to append .html to the end of your URLs. I would see about modifying/making one that allows for shtml.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys - this helped quite a bit. I put the /%postname%.shtml in the permalinks, only to find that it only worked on posts, not pages. Did a little digging, and realized I needed a plugin like omgyams mentioned for pages. Turns out there's already a 'shtml for pages' plugin - was the first one that came up in a search. Installed it easily enough, and looks to be working in the WP dashboard in that when I create a new page, the url permalink has '.shtml' on the end.

But I still must be doing something wrong. When I created a test page to replace one of my existing html pages created in dreamweaver, the newly-created WP-page (w/.shtml ending) ended up with the same exact url. Which is what I wanted. When I go to that same url, it's the old html page that comes up - not the new WP page.

(I was gonna ask about that, anyway - when I get the new content created in WP, what do I do with the html page so that I don't have duplicate content or somehow 2 different versions of the same url?)

However, I wanted to verify that it was working ok, so created a brand new test page in WP (not previously created in html) and published it. When I go to the url, the url looks just fine - site.com/page.shtml

Problem is I'm getting a '404 Not Found' error. The error page is in WP.

Any ideas what I'm goofing up?

Really appreciate the help so far.

EDIT - forgot to add that the issues I'm having are just on pages. I've tried a test post with the new permalinks structure, and the post publishes fine, looks fine, url is appropriate (site.com/post.shtml), etc. It's only pages that are goofing up. Maybe the plugin I installed isn't working correctly?
 
Ok - messed with it a little bit more and figured some shit out. :hollering:

I can seemingly add the .shtml extension to posts or pages - not both.

If you wanna add it to posts, then you have to put it in the permalinks (%postname%.shtml) as Elvis suggested. If you wanna add it to pages, then you have to install the 'shtml on pages' plugin I mentioned.

However, you can't do both, as they won't work together. For the 'shtml on pages' plugin to work appropriately, you have to have the permalinks structure as %postname% (without the .shtml extension).

So now I can re-create the pages in WP, but if I do and publish it, when I go to the url, it still just re-directs to the original page created in html. Once I have the new page created and published in WP, do I just go back into Dreamweaver and delete the original page created in html?

If so, given that the url would now be exactly the same, I'm assuming google won't fuck with it, and any backlinks pointing to it will still be just fine, right?

Like I said - I'm paranoid as hell about losing rankings with this site.
 
Once you get the new posts/pages sorted out, just delete the old static html ones from the server. And be sure to clear your browser cache so you see these updated ones.

I'm not sure about your other issues, though.
 
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