Transferring a site from html to WordPress

  • Hi

    I run a village website – https://www.blagdon.org – which has been constructed using basic html and simple javascript which was fine when it was just me.

    A group has now formed to run the site to cope with the workload. We have varying IT skill levels and work on different platforms. We want to use a common platform which will allow any of us to edit the site content. WordPress was chosen as it’s interface feels familiar to programmes the group uses and the wordpress community is legendary for it’s support.

    The aim is to move it within the year but as everyone who works on it are volunteers and have many commitments I know time will disappear. It’s a non profit venture and supplies it’s services free to the local community so only has funds for hosting. We need as a group to be able to maintain, update and develop the site ourselves.

    My problem is I don’t know where to start – the scale of task, while trying to learn wordpress is swamping me. If anyone could look at the current site – https://www.blagdon.org – and see if they think a migration is possible and then make suggestions as to how it could be done or where I need to go for more info that would be really appreciated.

    Yours hopefully

    Jules

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Looks relatively simple to me. The hardest part is going to be the theme– the front end appearance. The rest of the site is really just a series of pages– time consuming to input, maybe, but easy. What part of WP are you trying to learn?

    Thread Starter chamjumi

    (@chamjumi)

    Thanks for the words of reassurance – I feel like I did when I first learnt to drive. It’ll be second nature eventually but at the moment there seems a lot to take in.

    Apart from having a play with setting up WordPress.com site I’ve got little experience so pretty much I’m having to learn everything.

    You’re right, most of it will be static pages but there are different areas which contain monthly reports for example Parish council, Wi, Primary school – I suspect these should really be blogs and would be better set up as that in future (better for the reader and less maintenance for us).

    When I’m in a particular groups section I only want to see links, pages and reports relating to them and my experience from wordpress.com is that everything will show. I hoping that self-hosting will allow us to customise and add plugins etc that may give us the functionality we’re after.

    The current site is broken into sections and then subsections – top menu and left sidebar – is this still possible? I guess that recreating that will depend on the getting the theme right. Will we need a series of different templates for each section? I’m assuming the google calendar’s will be possible to embed or incorporate. Similarly that the javascript searches will be possible to reproduce somehow.

    I think look, navigation and functionality and how to achieve them are throwing me. Filling it up after the structure is sorted will be time consuming but if there’s a team of us it shouldn’t be too bad and a good learning experience.

    So from what you’re saying is the starting point finding, adapting or creating a theme that will suit?

    So from what you’re saying is the starting point finding, adapting or creating a theme that will suit?

    Right. Start there. No need to swallow everything at once.

    You mention that you are setting up a wordpress.com site? That is, you aren’t downloading the code and uploading to your own host? That is going to limit what you can do, and you may want to go to the wordpress.com forums for help.

    Thread Starter chamjumi

    (@chamjumi)

    Sorry, I’m being confusing.

    The WP.com site – addicottsarchive.wordpress.com – I referred to is a different project. It needed to be up and running sooner and had different requirements. In some respects its a test run for us – a good way of getting familiar with posting etc.

    The village site will be a WP site which we’ll upload to our own space.

    Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Now if someone can find me an extra day each week I’m laughing …. ??

    Look around at themes and find something you like, then come back with questions. Take it step by step. It really shouldn’t be that hard.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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