Silly Question about Sub Directory Installation

  • Resolved legendsofamerica

    (@legendsofamerica)


    9 years, 4 months ago

    We have an existing website with simple html pages on our primary domain (no CSS involved, old and klunky). We want to install wordpress, configure, then begin replacing our website piece by piece (we have 4,000 plus pages).

    The information here has been great, but for some reason I just can’t get my head around how to plan our installation. Ultimately, I want to:

    1. Install into a hidden area of our web server (using instruction https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Test_Driving_WordPress#Hiding_Your_WordPress_Test_Area)

    2. Find and use a responsive theme, configure it, etc using all the wonderful information provided here on www.ads-software.com.

    3. Replace pages one at a time on our existing html website.

    Questions:
    A) Am I creating this hidden directory off the root, or off publichtml folder? Seems I’ve read both??

    B) If the install is in a hidden folder, is my plan to replace each page of our existing website dead on arrival?

    C) If I’m creating a subdirectory (mywebsite.com/wordpress) for installation, when I want to replace a page (mywebsite.com/story.html) would that url then change to the sub (mywebsite.com/wordpress/story.php)?

    I think I’m just being hard headed and not seeing something obvious as a newby here, so any input is greatly appreciated.

    Dave

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hey legendsofamerica,

    A) Typically anything above your “web root” (which is your public_html folder) isn’t visable via the web. You you’d need to create the hidden folder in the public_html folder.

    B) I’m not sure I’m following your question here. You should leave the old site and pages up until you are ready to launch the site. That way there’s no 404 errors which can affect any search rankings you may have.

    C) Temporarily, yes. While you are working on the site, the URL’s will not match since you’re in a subfolder. However, when you are ready to launch the site, you can leave it in the subfolder, but have it work from the base url. Here’s a tutorial how:

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

    Thread Starter legendsofamerica

    (@legendsofamerica)

    Thanks for the response Tim,

    Should have been clearer on B, sorry. What I was asking is if we finish a page in the hidden subfolder can we make that page visible. We are looking for a way to replace pages over a period of time since we have over 4,000 pages to convert. I think you may have answered that when answering C.

    This is something important to remember. You can do what you are asking and make the new page in WordPress “live” over time, as you complete them.

    However, the URL will not be the same. If you are alright with that, then you would ignore the link I provided you earlier. However, for SEO value and so search engines know you replaced the old URL with the new one, you’ll need to set up 301 redirects. This will allow any backlinks on the internet to go directly to the new page instead of showing a 404 error.

    Thread Starter legendsofamerica

    (@legendsofamerica)

    Yeah, that doesn’t sound pretty. Thanks Tim, looks like what we really need is a magic tool that can strip all formatting (except a href for links) from existing pages, then populate the info into a template for the new page creation. If anyone can pull that rabbit out of their hat let me know ??

    I’ve never used this, and don’t know anything about this specific plugin but, you would need to look for a content scraper:

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-web-scrapper/

    Thread Starter legendsofamerica

    (@legendsofamerica)

    Thanks Tim, I think we may reach out via Paid Support on that plugin and see if we can get something close to what I described ??

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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