Website redesign, some urls are no longer available. How do I mitigate ranking drops?

[donsilvernail]

I am currently refreshing my WordPress business website. I used a theme that had a built in portfolio option. I wanted to strip down the bloat and move to something more simple to better articulate my message.

Upon switching themes I will loose my urls for my portfolio projects. I should have never used this built in function but it did exactly what I needed and wanted here is an example.

http://silvernailwebdesign.com/portfolio-view/central-jersey-claims-association-wordpress-consulting/

Now on my staging site these portfolio pieces have vanished and the urls are indexed with google. I could create posts and recreate the portfolio pieces however the problem with the url is the /portfolio-view/ portion. I cannot recreate the part of the url. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I receive some traffic through the portfolio pages but not much, however, I do not want to loose any traffic.

I am looking for a strategy that will solve this url issue with WordPress. I have about 10 separate portfolio pages with this url issue.

[BradsDeals]

I would recreate the portofolio URLs on the new theme with the new URL structure, then 301 the old URLs to the new ones. You can do the 301s pretty easily on Wordpress with the Redirection plugin.

If you don't want to recreate the portfolios, just 301 the old URLs to the most relevant page on the redesigned site.

Hope that helps!

[donsilvernail]

Hi Rebecca,

Sounds easy but for some reason when switching themes the portfolio urls completely disappeared.

I tried looking for it on my staging site. http://dsilvernail.staging.wpengine.com/portfolio-view/central-jersey-claims-association-wordpress-consulting/ it 404's How could I do a redirect on a url that no longer exists? The custom post type disappears completely too. Is there a way to add the /portfolio-view/ to a new url so I can just create them.

I am afraid I will have to code into my new theme the full portfolio option from my old theme.

[BradsDeals]

You should still be able to do a 301. You just need to know what the URL was_, _even if it's not there anymore. In fact, you can 301 a URL that's never existed at all. It's basically just a note that says "we think the thing you're looking for is over there".

[donsilvernail]

Rebecca,

I did not realize that. One last question how do I redirect a url that does not exist? I always used a redirect plugin. Is this something that needs to be done on the server? maybe htaccess file? Please excuse my lack of knowledge here, I have not run into a situation like this before.

[BradsDeals]

It's been awhile since I've used Redirection (the Wordpress plugin I mentioned) but you would just copy/paste it into a field there. There's no validation check for whether or not the page currently exists that I recall. Someone else lurking around this topic may be able to confirm that.

[donsilvernail]

Thank you so much for the advice

[donsilvernail]

I just installed the plugin you recommended. This is exactly what I am looking for. Thank you!

[BradsDeals]

Yay! Awesome!