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Migrating from iWeb to Wordpress: how keep former pages active

Hello,

I've been using iWeb for over two years and I've published hundreds of pages of the magazine Webhttp://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.



Alain

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 4 Giga RAM memory

Posted on Jan 2, 2013 11:23 AM

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Posted on Jan 2, 2013 11:47 AM

You can keep your "old" website online by publishing it to your 3rd party hosting server and linking to it from your new, Wordpress website. If you don't already have a new 3rd party hosting service this may be of help to you: Life After MobileMe.


You still have your domain.sites2 file used to create your original website so all you need to do is to publish it directly (with iWeb 3) to the FTP server or with iWeb 2 to a folder on your hard drive and use a 3rd party FTP client to upload the site folder and external index.html file to the server.



OT

24 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jan 2, 2013 11:47 AM in response to Ahïaïaïweb

You can keep your "old" website online by publishing it to your 3rd party hosting server and linking to it from your new, Wordpress website. If you don't already have a new 3rd party hosting service this may be of help to you: Life After MobileMe.


You still have your domain.sites2 file used to create your original website so all you need to do is to publish it directly (with iWeb 3) to the FTP server or with iWeb 2 to a folder on your hard drive and use a 3rd party FTP client to upload the site folder and external index.html file to the server.



OT

Jan 2, 2013 2:27 PM in response to Ahïaïaïweb

Since your iWeb created site appears to be published to a sub folder - "yesicannes" - this would be uploaded to the same root folder as the Wordpress site files so that it continues to exist as a sub site under the same domain name.


All the old URLs should still work but, since the index.php file for the Wordpress site will replace iWeb's external index file, visitors who enter the domain name in the browser will be taken to the new site.


Wordpress is not the best choice for building a website (rather than a blog) but at least it does have the option of some reponsive designs. Example...


http://mobile.ezmacwebdesign.com/


... and click the "Blog" button.


The example site is create with jQuery Mobile which is free, very straightforward to use and extremely well documented.

Jan 3, 2013 11:18 AM in response to Roddy

Hi Roddy,


Thanks for your answer. You say :


"All the old URLs should still work but, since the index.php file for the Wordpress site will replace iWeb's external index file, visitors who enter the domain name in the browser will be taken to the new site."


This is exactly what I want! For two years, I've been publishing over 300 pages with iWeb and they must remain active when my domain will point to the new site "home page". We've broadcasted the links to "old" pages hundreds of time all over the world, links to them are posted in all our social media, and I don't want visitors to get a "404 error" when clicking on them.


So, after you, il I upload WP to the root of my space with the /yesicannes file, the old pages should be accessible. But how can I suppress the old home page once the new site is active ?


Thanks for your time.

Jan 3, 2013 11:27 AM in response to Wyodor

Hi Wyodor,


Many thanks for your information. I'm happy to discuss the matter with people from outside France, where I can't get a straightforward answer to my concern, even from hosting techs belonging to big hosting companies!


Have you any idea as how to replace the "old" index.html by the new "index.php" and keep my "old" pages active ? I won't need any more the former old page made with iWeb. If I create a sub-domain, the former link won't work, will they ?


Many thanks in advance.

Jan 3, 2013 12:38 PM in response to Ahïaïaïweb

You would upload the iWeb site in its folder as a sub site which would require the URL...


http://www.domain-name.com/Folder-Name/Page-Name.html


... which is what it is anyway.


The new site would have its files uploaded to the root folder so that the URL to any page is...


http://www.domain-name.com/Page-Name.html


That way the old site can stay online as long as you want it to.


Note that a sub site is not the same as a sub domain.


You might want to wait a while before committing to Wordpress and see if the iWeb replacement suits your needs...


http://www.iwebreplacementapp.com

Jan 3, 2013 1:11 PM in response to Roddy

This is quite an interesting article which suggests Wordpress as a replacement for iWeb...


http://tidbits.com/article/13404


Designing an original looking site in Wordpress, to me, is more of a challenge than creating one from scratch using CSS and HTML.


Wordpress sites also use way too much code and the only good reason for using this platform for a website (rather than a blog) would be if you required a CMS (Content Management System) that could be used by several contributors. Having said that, there are a lot better CMSs than Wordpress - and better blogging tools too.

Jan 4, 2013 7:07 AM in response to Roddy

Hello Roddy,


Thank you very much for your time and answers and links to informations.


1) After what I understand from your answer, I just have to upload WP to the root folder of my FTP space and leave the iWeb site as it is now in its file and voilà! That is great! But what about the modification of home page the domain has to point at ? Could you please explain me how to stop the domain to point at the iWeb home page and have the yesicannes.com domain point to the new WP site ? I also intend to move to another host.


2) I agree with you concerning the building of a site from scratch. I have begun a replacement site with Dreamweaver, but I have to deal with the magazine (events to attend to, pictures to sort and edit, reports to write) my "real" job and in the end, I spend my time in front of the computer when I don't work and have no time left to seriously work on the new site. Dreamweaver needs a long learning curve, hence the WordPress or lese, I don't have any personal life any more.


3) iWeb replacement: I've signed up for being informed, but have you any idea of when an app will be released ?


4) WordPress is said to be the best or one of them for designing a dynamic site, what I need. I intend to buy a premium WP template and to personalize it. WP is also said to have clear code. And according to you, what are the better CMSs than WP ?


I know it's a lot of questions, but the answers would help me very much to make my mind.


Thanking yoou in advance, I'm looking forward to reading you.

Jan 4, 2013 8:36 AM in response to Ahïaïaïweb

[1] Here's a screenshot of a root folder on my server containing wordpress files....


User uploaded file

Note how there is a folder named "iWeb-SIte". Substitute your own name - yesicannes.


If a visitor enters the URL...


http://www.domain-name.com


... the Wordpress site will appear.


If they enter ...


http://www.dommain-name.com/iWeb-Site/


The iWeb built site will appear.


All you old website pages have the URL...


http://www.yesicannes.com/yesicannes/Page-Name.html


... so all these old URLs will still be valid.


[2] HTML is now very simple. Anybody should be able to grasp the basics in a couple of hours. There are thousands of free and paid CSS style sheets available so its quite easy for anybody to create an original looking website with very little knowledge of code - just some common sense.


[3] I don't know when the iWeb Replacement will be ready since I haven't been sent the beta yet.


[4] I'm not sure what you mean by a "dynamic" site. What features are you looking for?


Web design techniques are constantly changing and most of the Wordpress templates that I have looked at are very dated.


The problem with Wordpress is that each page loads dozens of scripts - most of which are not even required for that particular page.


Websites need to download a lot faster nowadays since so many people are surfing using cell phone networks. These users also have data limits and really don't need to download all these scripts that webmasters are too lazy to take out.

Jan 4, 2013 9:30 AM in response to Ahïaïaïweb

Wordpress was never really intended to create websites at first, but was always know as a blogging system. It has worked around to be a CMS tool that can be used to create websites with a blog included and the good thing about CMS's is that you can allow others to join your site and give them access to different things, such as a membership website and this is harder to do using iWeb.


The other CMS's and the most popular that are regularly used for designing websites are Drupal and Joomla. Drupal has a bit of a steep learning curve, but it has been simplified with the release of Drupal 7. Joomla is good and easy to install on a server - this can be done either manually or some web hosts have one click installation, howewever, you can do more if you install manually, which is easy to do. Ensure that you register with a web host that supports Joomla and then go to http://joomla.org and download the current version of Joomla and then upload it to your sever and then create your database and link the 2 together and away you go.


You can use lots of different templates as you can with WordPress and you can have a members section and then restrict access and you can invite people to join. That is the beauty of CMS's, that you can update all you need to online and you can do more as all the CMS's such as Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are linked to databases and need these to be able to run.


I have one website that I created for work that I used iWeb to create and then needed to separate some of my work, so decided to create my new website in WordPress, so currently, I have one website in iWeb and another in WordPress and I am just in the process of updating another and am planning on using Joomla for this.


If you are going to a new web host, then go to one that supports WordPress and the other content management systems so that you then have the choice of the one click installation process or the manual installation as you wish.

Jan 4, 2013 10:13 AM in response to Roddy

Many thanks Roddy for your valuable answers.


If I understand you well on point 1, as soon as I will open the new Wordpress site, when I will enter the domain name "yesicannes.com" in the control pannel, the "old" iWeb hope page won't be reachable any more but the new WP home page instead. That suits me perfectly if it is so!


Could you please confirm this point ?


HTML is indeed simple and I have built a new site with DW, using HTML and CSS, but it has remained in draft stages because I need a dynamic site, and for this purpose, I have to master PHP, that I will learn through tutos on the Net. Meanwhile, the good solution is WordPress.


A dynamic site, like the ones you can design with WP, is necessary for a magazine as it avoids to create a new page for each report. With iWeb, allowing to design only "stactic sites", I have published more than 300 pages! With a dynamic site, datas - articles and pictures- are upoaded in a My SQL DB and handed out into an HTML page upon the visitor's request.


I guess that if you look at a nowadays WP template, like this one :

http://demo.themezilla.com/?theme=viewport&ref=tf

made with HTML 5 and CSS 3, you should find it's built with clean code and is responsive to adapt to smartphones and tablets.


Anyway, WordPress is a handy solution in the limited amount of time I have and I think I know enough HTML and CSS to cleanse the coding.


Thank you again for all the time you've spend explaing me all these matters.

Migrating from iWeb to Wordpress: how keep former pages active

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