Best Way To Convert My Static Websites To Mambo/Joomla?

[dennis-djktek]

Hello,

I have several static websites and a couple have already grown to over 400 pages each. I am now at a point where maintaining these websites and adding new content (mostly articles) regularly has become a slow and very time consuming process. And lately, I am finding it hard to keep up.

After doing some research, I've decided to convert them slowly to either Mambo or Joomla. This will afford me easier website and content management (most especially the ease of entering new content/articles).

Also, since my 2 bigger sites took about a year to get something going in Google, I wouldn't want to wait another year if I screw this conversion up.

So, since I haven't done this before, can someone help me please and tell me the best way to go about doing this? Or point me to some info that can help me do this?

I will greatly appreciate any help or info that you can throw my way.

Thanking you in advance,

Dennis

[dennis-djktek]

Since I'm seeing quite a bit of page views but no replies, I hope my request for help is not being misunderstood. I really do not need a step by step procedure on how to physically convert my static sites to CMS (Mambo/Joomla).

I just need some tips and advice on the process: i.e.,

- Do I convert all content (approx 400 articles or so) at the same time or do them a few at a time (spreading them over a few weeks or months)? Or does it matter?

- I don't think I'll be able to preserve the filenames in Mambo/Joomla (or can I?), that means I'll need redirects. Should I then do redirects immediately? Any timing issues to watch out for? And will I have 'duplicate content' issues?

Bottom line is, I don't want to loose the little progress that I already have gained on search engines by screwing this process up. So any info, tips and advice would be very helpful and appreciated.

Any takers? Please?

Thanks,

Dennis

[cyanide]

Hi Dennis,

I'm relatively fluent in Mambo/Joomla.

Since you don't want to potentially lose rank, I would advise that you install joomla in a sub-directory of your website, create it, design it, add in your content, then when you're ready, move the entire folder to your root directory, then create the 301 redirects from the old pages, to the new ones.

Tip: Pick up the module from open-sef.org which will re-write your urls.

[Crunch]

Hi I have been through this process 7 times in the last year , with some of my sites. On some occasions we were able to keep the urls. Utilising either SEF404 or SEF advance already mentioned by cyanide. This could really help with your rankings IF the original urls are worth keeping?
BTW we found Mambo to be good but have to do all sorts of hacks to get what we want. The data transfer was a huge pain, and was done by hand, but now its in a database and so much easier to manage!

[dennis-djktek]

Thank you so much for your replies, cyanide and Crunch!

But clarify something for me please...

If I can keep the URLs with SEF, I guess cyanide's suggestion of a wholesale update would be just fine... but if can't, would they be considered as new content since they would have new URL's?

And if that's the case, then maybe I should do them gradually, say convert and then 301 redirect a few at a time (spread them over a few weeks or months) to avoid being penalized by Google? Or does it matter?

Either way this is going to be a long and arduous process but I think it's going to be worth it in the long run. I'd hate to go through this process when I already have several Ks of content. I guess now is not that bad.

Thanks again.

Dennis