Is this the right way to go about a permalink/category/site migration?

  • Situation:

    My existing site (https://www.avalon5.com) is hosted on Windows/IIS and since an upgrade to WP2.5 it now no longer displays pages, only posts. Current thinking seems to be it’s a permalink issue, but because I’m on a windows hosted solution it’s yet another limitation to have to take into account with WP, so I’m thinking of moving to a linux hosted solution.

    Requirement:

    I’m going to have to migrate the domain hosting to the linux hoster as well as the site, but in doing so I want to redesign the URL/permalinks (current is /index.php/%category%/%postname%/ but I want to change this in the new setup) and the look and feel and relaunch the site under it’s new home/setup. My aim is to make the new site layout less cluttered (less categories, more sub-categories) and more SEO friendly (permalink change), but most of all to get it up and running on linux with less hassles going forward, assuming I can recover/preserve my years of content from my current site.

    Plan:

    1) Purchase a new domain name to be used as a build point (call it new.com for now)
    2) Purchase a linux hosting agreement with above domain from new hoster
    3) Install WP2.5 on new.com and then customise a new theme (look and feel)
    4) Ensure new WP install uses /%category%/%postname%/ URLs
    5) Recategorise new WP install (e.g. less categories, more sub-categories)
    6) Test new site with new / fresh test content and and get it ready-for-migration.

    When ready – and this is where I really need your help – I then need to know the best way to migrate the content across from the existing site to the new one, given that it will be from different URLs/permalinks and from a different category structure.

    My assumption is that once this is done I can then migrate the domain name across to the new hoster, then copy the WP2.5 install files and db content from new.com to the newly hosted avalon5.com and db.

    Is this feasible? Is there a better way of doing it? How can I do a permalink and category migration from one structure to a new one?

    All help greatly appreaciated because if I can’t figure out a way to do this I think I’ll just give up blogging and wordpress because I’m so fed up with Windows/IIS issues (can’t cache properly, can’t mod_rewrite etc.) and now 2.5 issues screwing with my site.

    Over to you, and thank you for whatever help or guidence you can offer.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter c0y0te

    (@c0y0te)

    Folks – I’m keen to get started on this but very aware that I may be making more work for myself than is necessary.

    Could some kind soul who has experience of migrating content/permalinks/categories please advise me on the best way forward, given the circumstances above? Thank you.

    Thread Starter c0y0te

    (@c0y0te)

    OK – I’ve got the new hosting account and I’ve registered a new domain to play with… but I really need some best practice advice here folks about the permalink/category migration.

    Can you help me please? I’d really love to do this work over the weekend if possible. Cheers.

    I’m hosted on a Linux server and have the same problem with pages not showing. IMHO WP needs to fix it so it works with all permalink structures. Shouldn’t be something that is broken or requires creative workarounds to get working without borking the whole site is the process. I’m not upgrading the main site until the bugs are fixed.

    Thread Starter c0y0te

    (@c0y0te)

    Ah crap. I was under the impression it was buggered because I was on a Windows/IIS setup, but that if I changed the permalink in a Unix setup it would be fine.

    Still – I’ve gone and purchased the new hosting and domains so I might as well do the migration, but I’m still looking for advice please on the best way to do it (e.g. how should I handle the changing permalink and changing categories?)

    I tested a new site fresh install, Dreamhost’s one click install, pages showed no problem. I had figured that my .htaccess file was the culprit on the test site, updated it and promptly got the dreaded 500 Internal Server Error sitewide as I had saved the file in the wrong format causing a parse error but saving it in Unix format fixed that. Site is on Unix server. My thanks to Dreamhost support for finding and fixing the problem with the file. I would not have figured that bit out otherwise as I don’t have my WP files writable to edit in WP.

    Thread Starter c0y0te

    (@c0y0te)

    Mog – I don’t suppose you can advise me on how to get my content across from one site to the other when the permalink and categories are changing?

    I haven’t tried it myself, have previously imported Blogger site no problems. As the database stores posts by ID# not permalink structure, it should import fine. You can change permalink structure and the blog itself won’t break, just if someone else linked the post, won’t find it. The redirect used to be in the .htaccess file, now it’s streamlined. It should be no harder than the upgrade as that had to change the database.

    Not sure on the category change, it “Import posts, comments, custom fields, pages, and categories from a WordPress export file” so you’d get all the old categories back. Can change the name of the category afterwards.

    I have a couple test blogs, I could test it out. Suggest trying it on a blog in a subdomain first. That way if it doesn’t work can delete the whole thing and start over.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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