Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the responses/input.

Just to help clarify some things.

The current/old site has around 300 pages or so...each page is uniquely created and coded. Some of the site uses CSS, some parts of it don't. The design team is somewhat restricted because we are essentially building on top of the existing site...using the existing infrastructure, CSS, navigation system, etc. We have tried working within these boundaries and have made changes to various pages...but not nearly as quickly as we would like. In addition, the new design of the site will be organized slightly different...right now each product individual process has its own landing page...while this presents a lot of information, in our opinion it confuses the customer and breaks the continuity of the ordering process.

The new site, which will be built from ground up, will be hosted on our test site until it is completely finished and ready to be uploaded over the old site. Due to the new structural/navigation system, the total number of pages will be greatly reduced and the new site will have its own new CSS, used by every page...as opposed to whenever convenient on the old site. Since we will be making a shift from organizing our products from process to a "logo/no logo approach", the individual process landing pages (such as laser engraved, rotary engraved, full color printed) will no longer be available...instead one page (tags with a logo) with all the processes listed will be used. While not as effective as dynamic site like BJ suggests, it will offer us a template that we can use on all of the product lines.

So technically while we should be able to get parts and pieces of the old site updated, it would seem that the new approach of building a new site would be easier, more effective and would help to unify our efforts.

The major areas of concern though are that we will no longer have the process-specific landing pages which have been optimized and well ranked...which is where the 301 redirects come in; since we are able to create and rename pages, some of the more popular pages can still be retained but structured slightly differently. We would leave the old pages on the new site with 301 redirects until the SEs reindex the site completely and thoroughly.

The other primary concern is that a simultaneous upload of the new site to replace the old would "shock" the SEs to the point where we would disappear from the results. While we are hoping to not be out of the index for long, because we are primarily an e-commerce site, any downtime...especially prolonged downtime, can be quite concerning.

At this time, the new site and the test domain are still a work-in-progress and should still take a few more months to be ready to be launched. In the meantime, I wanted to learn as much about the process and from others' experiences who have done something similar to this.