SEO Friendly Migration to New CMS

Hi,

I'm in a jam. I have a static html site in the main directory, another in a subdirectory and a static blog in another subdirectory. I need to keep the same url structure because the site has hundreds of links pointing to it. I'm no techie, and I need to migrate to something fulfilling the following needs:

1. Static website generation and multisite (on same domain) blogging. Static blogging is ideal, but not necessary. This means a static site on the root level domain, another in a subdirectory and a blog (static or dynamic) in another subdirectory.

2. The ability to import and migrate an entire blog from a static blogging platform (Thingamablog) via its RSS feed WHILE KEEPING THE SAME URL'S FOR EVERY PAGE. All pages have the html extension. If 301 redirects are necessary, so be it, although if this hurts seo I'd prefer a different option.
3. A combined WYSIWYG editor with the ability to edit and embed html as an option.

4. A support network that's in touch with real people's issues rather than an insider nerd club that thrives on lingo.

Remember. I'm just running my own website and have always used sitebuilders and such.

Thanks in advance!

To cut straight to the chase, what you're asking sounds like it's beyond your current skill level. If you need this done anytime soon, you would be best off hiring a web developer to do it.

Sometimes blogging platforms will have migration scripts that allow you to import data from one to system to another. If you can find a migration script like this it will greatly simplify what you need to do. These types of scripts rarely use RSS feeds to do the migration though. If that's an absolute requirement you might need to program your own migration code. I looked up Thingamablog and it doesn't look like a major or very recent software package; my guess is that you won't have much luck finding a migration script. Programming your own is a non-trivial task, especially if you don't know how to program.

WordPress is not a static blogging platform, but it is one of, if not the, most used blog software on the internet. Static blogging platforms are far less common because they are sort of a pain to maintain from a code perspective. In fact, I can't really think of any specific packages off the top of my head.

Keeping your old URLs is certainly feasible, but the exact approach required to do so will vary greatly depending on what new blogging software you choose. If you can find a migration script it might support configuring this automatically.

My advice to you would be to set up WordPress and see if you like it.

I installed a Wordpress on a one database multisite install. Having troubles with publishing and the dashboard for subdirectories give me 404's. I might try to figure that out and then study exactly how to use some of the import plugins that allow for keeping the same url structure. I also tried to upload Joomla because they have good plugins for importing RSS into separate "articles" and good ones for custom url's. However, their latest version is filled with tons of redundant files, many with the same name (at least 10 instances of index.html), and only one file, an xml file, will upload to my public html folder after unzipping the file. It's quite strange. I'm stuck either trying to figure out Wordpress and hoping it will do the job or finding out which files the joomla zip folder is supposed to have and deleting the rest.

I believe html import 2 is a WP plugin that could help, but I'm not completely sure.

If nothing else, I might have to install WP on three different databases and do a little research. By the way, Coding's not an issue. I've done that, but it's just annoying having to learn languages to make simple websites. That's why a minimum of coding is ideal.

most index.html files are to stop people seeing the contents of a directory when html is not the main extension the server using as a index file