How do you incorporate a Wordpress blog onto an ecommerce website?

[Dr-Pete]

It's probably true that the subdomain approach is easier, but I lean toward the subfolder these days - it's possible for subdomains to fragment in some cases and not pass all authority to the root domain. The subfolder can help preserve that inbound link value.

Ben and Andrea's comments about the difficulty of subfolders and potential risk of integrating WordPress on to your main servers are certainly valid and worth considering. I'm definitely not an expert on WP migration, and there's more than one way to achieve it. It's possible to actually keep the WP installation on a separate server and then make it act as if it "lives" under the "/blog" subfolder with a reverse proxy, but that's pretty complex:

http://www.apachetutor.org/admin/reverseproxies

No matter which route you go, keep in mind that you'd need to 301-redirect all of the old URLs to either the subdomain or subfolder version. Simply moving the WP installation won't migrate the inbound link-juice or traffic. Both visitors and spiders need to be redirected to the new URLs - that's absolutely critical.

[jonmorse86]

Dear Peter, Andrea and Ben. Thank you all for taking the time to help answer my query. The points re security are valid and also Ben, thank you for your step by step response - much needed by an SEO novice!

However, I spoke to my web agency today and they have told me that they can only run .net blogs on their server and not .php which our current Wordpress blog is written in : ( Does anyone know of any blogs written in .net?

Thank you once again, Jon

[Dr-Pete]

I can't vouch for these tactic, but there are ways to port WordPress to .Net. For example:

http://www.php-compiler.net/blog/2011/wordpress-on-net-4-0

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wordpressnet/

It might be better to go with a .Net-native app, but it's not completely impossible to run WordPress.

Can they set up a reverse proxy? You could theoretically run the current WordPress blog on a separate server, but then make it look like it "lives" on a subdomain or subfolder. It's a bit tricky, but it's possible.

[blacey]

Hi Jon,

Thank you for your feedback, its much appreciated  and I'm glad I could assist. To answer your question, a blog can be written in any server-side language (PHP, .net, Clasic ASP, Ruby etc).

You will often find that .net hosting will be more expensive as opposed to php.

[josh-riley]

As someone who is currently dealing with the making a WP blog look like it lives on a subdomain, I will agree with Dr. Pete that it's very tricky.

[blacey]

The php-compiler.net blog article about running php on a .net platform is interesting, but wherever possible its always better to run applications in their native environment.

[jonmorse86]

Hi Peter,
Many thanks  for sending those two links over - I'm leaning on perhaps setting up a new .net blog so that it'll be easier to integrate with our site.

Regarding your last point, it we run the current Wordpress blog on a separate server and make it look like it "lives" on a subfolder would it still have the same SEO benefit?

Cheers, Jon

[jonmorse86]

Thanks Ben, I feel this is good advice also safer, quicker and easier to run a blog in its native environment. Cheers, Jon

[jonmorse86]

Hi Andrea, thank you for your comments - I'm definitely keen to avoid anything to painstaking and most importantly, costly! Jon

[Dr-Pete]

If it's done correctly and Google sees it as if it lives in the subfolder, then yes - it's perfectly fine for SEO. This is a technically tricky solution, though, and would really depend on the capabilities of your hosting provider.