Site Migration between CMS's

[nezona]

Hi There,

I have a technical question about migrating CMS's but not servers. My client has site A on Joomla install, He want's ot migrate to Wordpress and we will call this site B. As he has a lot of old content on site A he doesn't want to lose, he has put site B (wordpress install) on a subdirectory site.com/siteb (for example). and will use a htaccess to forward the root domain to this wordpress site.

Therefore anyone going to www.site.com will see the new wordpress site and the old content and joomla install will sit on the root of the server. Will Google have an issue with this? Will it even find the old content? what are the issues for the new site and new content?

Look forward getting your guys input

[LynnPatchett]

HI Neil,

The joomla installation will in effect be 'deactivated' when you switch the htaccess rules over to serving the root from the wp install (you will also be replacing index.php in the root folder if memory serves).  Google will not have a problem with this BUT the old joomla content will not be available anymore (to users or bots). You will be recreating the old content on the new wp install also right?

You will need to make sure your 301s are setup properly from the old joomla urls to the new wp urls and you will need to wait until after the switch to the wp site to verify these are working properly so a bit of preplanning and verification afterwards will be needed there. Other than that all the usual best practices for switching to a new site are all still of importance, check out this guide for a good rundown. Hope it helps!

[DirkC]

Hi Neal,

If I understand what you're saying - you're not really doing a migration - you will be running two CMS's in parallel; the current content will remain in Joomla & the new url will be created in Wordpress. People visiting the homepage will be redirected to site.com/wordpress_site/index.htm

If this is the case, this solution doesn't really look future proof. First of all there is the maintenance issue, you'll have to maintain two systems. Very soon, you will probably only update the Wordpress site & neglect the Joomla site and the two sites will become completely disconnected (and the Joomla content outdated). At one point, you will probably want to retire the Joomla application & then you will have to redirect the entire site to the root again.

I had a similar case when we did a partial migration (part of the site migrated to the new cms in a subfolder / part remained on the old cms on the root). The part which was migrated was one of the traffic generators of the site & we really had a very big drop in traffic (as this new part was almost disconnected from the rest of the site. To be honest, there were also a lot of other issues with the new cms, which probably had part in the traffic loss )

I would recommend you to check if you can't migrate the content from the old cms into the new one (at least the part which is generating traffic). If this is not possible, or difficult on short timeframe - I would 301 the Joomla site to archive.site.com (or site.com/archive) & put the new site on the root. In a second step - you can then put the content from the old site into the new one and redirect from the archive to the new site.

Dirk

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi

• Once the 301 redirects are in place and they should be done page by page not domain to buy domain.
• Creating a separate new URL that will hold content will not help actually it will hurt because that new URL will not have any authority.
• Simply redirect the URLs to the most relevant or exact URL on Wordpress.
• Take any of the quality content from the old (CMS A) and move that over to (CMS B) a.k.a. WordPress

You will need a few of the things below. One of the most important ones is either a copy of screaming frog preferably the Pro version or deep crawl

My preferred method is to use both but deep crawl rocks look at this article about site redevelopment it will index both sites and really make your life a lot easier

1. http://deepcrawl.co.uk/use-cases/site-redevelopment
2. http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Definitely download the free version! & a pro- of screaming fraud there is a paid version it is 100 British pounds

Read this guide it has incredible insight on how to use both tools

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/

Here are the basics that you don't want to stray from at all take all this in before changing the URL.

• http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons

• http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

• http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic

• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067216/The-10-Step-Site-Migration-Process

• http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-move-your-site-from-joomla-to-wordpress/

• http://www.reviewzntips.com/migrate-from-joomla-to-wordpress/

I hope this helps,

Thomas