Migration from iWeb to WordPress: how keep former pages active ?

[Aïaïaïweb]

Hello,

I've been using iWeb for over two years and I've published hundreds of pages of the magazine Web http://www.yesicannes.com. But I can not go on with iWeb, a great software to create sites but hampered by its limitations. I'm going to use Wordpress to build a dynamic site, that will of course have the same URL: www.yesicannes.com as the former one by iWeb.

My big concern is how to keep active the links to pages already published with iWeb (host OVH)? These links were broadcasted hundreds of times around the world ... I also intend to include them in the "summary" of the new site to direct visitors to the old iWeb version of the magazine.

If someone has successfully migrated from iWeb to WP could please be so kind as to share his (her) experience in hosting, I would be very grateful.

Thank you in advance.

[Alphakline]

Judging by your website URL, your entire iweb site is located in the folder
/yesicannes/ off of your root directory.

Your iweb URL: http://www.yesicannes.com/yesicannes/page.html etc.

If you do wordpress, you'll have that installed on the root ("/") with your new pages, design and whatnot.

So your iweb site can remain where it is now, nothing changes excpet removing the index.html in the root directory because that automatically redirects to your iweb folder /yesicannes/ (iweb created this) as you would want the wordpress index.php file to take precedence in your root.

Your wordpress version of your new site would use a URL scheme like:
http://www.yesicannes.com/ <-- Home page (index.php)
http://www.yesicannes.com/page2/
http://www.yesicannes.com/blog/post1/
http://www.yesicannes.com/blog/post2/
etc....

Basically, in theroy, since you're advertising your URL's like this: http://www.yesicannes.com/yesicannes...nner_2012.html nothing will need to be changed as all of those pages are not on your root directory and will continue to work normally.

Hope that makes sense ?

[SrWebDeveloper]

Excellent advice and I concur, but the OP also noted, " I also intend to include them in the summary of the new site to direct visitors to the old iWeb version of the magazine."

This will need to be explained, i.e. simply links in a bucket or integrated in a more seamless manner to confirm with the WP theme? Just checking.

[Aïaïaïweb]

Hi Alphakline,

Many thanks for your kind advices. Your explanations make sense for me all the more that they match what I already thought about the issue.

You and SrWebDeveloper confirm what I was hoping: I just have to leave the iWeb file as it is now and only upload WP to the root (/www) and:
- the "old" iWeb pages keep on responding to: http://www.domain-name.com/Folder-Name/Page-Name.html
- the new Wordpress pages will respond to: http://www.domain-name.com/Page-Name.html

I now need to know how to stop the domain to point to the iWeb index.html and point to the new index.php WordPress hope page. In addition, I have to change host because the one I'm using has not a good reputation to work WP sites. What is the procedure to do these two changes ?

Could you please help me again on this matter ?

Many thanks again.

----------

Hi SrWebDeveloper,

Thank you very much for confirming Alphakline's views. That helps me a lot.

As far as the link I mentioned is concerned, I only need to put a link to the "old" iWeb magazine 2012 summary on the new WP summary page for visitors to see the old version. The link is by example: http://www.yesicannes.com/yesicannes/2012_summary.html
and the 2012 summary already bears a link to the 2011 summary.

I guess that is very simple, isn't it ?

Many thanks again.

[Alphakline]

I now need to know how to stop the domain to point to the iWeb index.html and point to the new index.php WordPress hope page. In addition, I have to change host because the one I'm using has not a good reputation to work WP sites. What is the procedure to do these two changes ?

If you look on your root directory for http://www.yesicannes.com/ you most likely have an index.html file there. That index file was created by iWeb and auto redirects the domain to the subfolder /yesicannes/ which is where all of your iweb pages and folders are kept.

If you open that index file in a text editor, you should see a meta tag within in. Should look something like this:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url= yesicannes/home.html" />

That tells the browser when landing on this page, index.html, which is in your domain, www.yesicannes.com, to automatically redirect to /yesicannes/home.html. So basically, if you delete that file there won't be a redirect. When you upload/install wordpress on your root, it comes with it's own index file so it will work fine and take over the main domain structure, but you still need to delete or edit the iweb index file name to something like index-iweb.html so that it doesn't load. Renaming it would allow you to keep it as a backup if wanted.

[Aïaïaïweb]

Hi Alphakline,

Many thanks again for your kind and much valuable help in the difficult (for me) matter of web hosting.

I've understood how to rename the index.html, but I have a last issue, if you had time: I know that moving one site from a web host to another is a very serious matter, involving a lot of errors if not done by the book.

So, what is the step-by-step procedure to change web host ? From OVH to Infomaniak, indeed.

Do I upload first the old iWeb site to Infomaniak ? How do I close the iWeb site at OVH ? (By renaming the index.html name ?) And how do I transfer the email account contact@yesicannes.com from OVH to Infomaniak ?And last but not least: I have no clue of DNS data management in the control panel...

I can manage to upload Wordpress to Infomaniak, but what is difficult for me to understand is how to transfer of the old iWeb site. So if you had the time to explain me how to do that, I would feel more relieved.

Thanking you in adance,