When converting a site from Joomla to WordPress (or changing platforms), do not change the category structure or the file naming convention. In other words, don’t do what I did.

Old School

When the site was hand coded, there was only one way to access any page on the site. All a reader had to do was type in the static URL and boom…there was the page! With content management systems such as Joomla and WordPress (yes, I call WordPress a content management system), it’s different.

It wasn’t until after I received over 600 “File not found” errors (started at 90 a day and has now trickled to only 10 or 15 a day) that I had a V-8 moment.

My old school thought process of accessing each page via one URL was outdated. With content management systems, pages can be accessed in a variety of ways. I won’t get into the whole relational database structure reasoning for why that is, but take my word for it.

Changing with the Times

In the past when I changed platforms all I had to do was insert a “change of address” line from the old webpage to the new. Now, with at least 10 ways to access any one page from my old Joomla site, the redirects seem endless. You see, something as simple as including or excluding the forward slash (/) at the end of a URL can generate a “File not found” error if things aren’t redirected correctly.

So, this Redirect Queen has been putting out redirect fires as they happen. I was pleased yesterday when I only received 11 crawl errors.

How do I Find the Errors?

There are two ways to track errors. The easy and not so thorough way is by checking my Statcounter stats. When I see “Page not found” in the log, I know I need to address the problem.

The other more complete way is by signing into my Google Webmaster account. There they list all of the errors Google encounters when the bots crawl my site. Some of the errors are because of redirects but some of the errors are a result of incorrect link backs. I see some of the sites linking to Tidbits were incorrectly coded.

Additionally, I’ve found that Joomla created a few pages that made absolutely no sense to me, but I’ve redirected them anyway.

When will it End?

The way I calculate it, I fully expect to be resolving redirects for a couple of months. Fortunately, each day there are fewer and fewer redirects and I’ve got it down to a science. I can now complete my daily redirect duty before I finish my first cup of coffee.

BTW, if you find yourself with the same problem (hopefully you won’t), there’s a plugin that helps to make the redirection process a little easier. The plugin is appropriately called Redirection .

Ya gotta love this stuff or else you wouldn’t do it.

The largest time consuming aspect of the transition was segregating out the articles to transition to the new platform from the articles to dump.

All in all, my site went from about 471 articles down to about 220. Tidbits lost a lot of weight. I believe the weight of the free articles was pulling Tidbits down. I also believe it was a big factor in the site being so harshly spanked by the Panda.

An Interesting Observation

It’s only been a day since I released the new site, but of the traffic it received yesterday, only 6 out of 486 page views were searching for removed articles. This didn’t surprise me because in checking the traffic and page view habits of my readers over time, I noted the free articles received little to no page views. Therefore dropping the articles was a no brainer.

Just goes to show that quality over quantity wins every time.

Nuts and Bolts

The new site uses the Solostream theme WP-Responsive. It’s one of their newest themes. I set it up in a separate directory under the Tidbits domain. Once I tweaked the theme to my liking, I began the process of moving the articles over.

Once I moved them over I checked each article for broken links and functioning image thumbnails. I created a checklist of things I had to do lest I would forget.

The biggest difficulty was in moving the old Kids Korner games over. If you checkout the site, you’ll see that I didn’t move some of the games over (I also dumped quite a few games too) because they were not compatible with the WordPress platform. No biggie, there’s always a work around for every problem (I’ve worked with Microsoft for so long that workarounds are a part of life).

Flipping the Switch

Once I was reasonably satisfied (webmasters are never 100% satisfied), I signed into my WordPress installation and modified the settings under the General tab. I changed the site’s address from the sub directory to the main URL (I left the WordPress URL alone).

After making those changes, I went back to the server and moved the index.php and .htaccess files into the root directory. This allows everyone to access the site by typing in the domain name instead of domain name/ sub directory name.

Almost Done

Before I actually flipped the switch, I had to set up a few redirects. Well, actually, more than a few. There are 956 lines of redirects.

Redirects tell the Internet to go to the new site instead of the old. Instead of attempting the impossible task of changing backlinks, I placed redirect lines of code inside of the .htaccess file. The trick with the redirects is figuring out each and every way someone might access a page on the old site.

Even the pages that I dropped from the site are redirected to the topic’s section page. For example, I used to have an article on the subject of wigs. Since I dropped the article, anyone looking for it on my site will be redirected to the Beauty/Health section page.

Redirects are Tricky

If you incorrectly add an extra space or improperly redirect a page, your whole site will display a 500 Server error. Therefore, I couldn’t copy and paste 956 lines of code into my .htaccess file. I had to do it a section at a time. It was a bit tedious, but it’s all done.

The redirects can only be tested on the live site. The other tricky part to redirects is the Google bot must read them in order to redirect incoming traffic. So, when I flipped the switch and uploaded my redirects, I had to wait to see if the Google bot would read my .htaccess file. I’d say it took the bot about 5 or 6 minutes before is showed up (whew).

Not Home Free Yet

For the next hour or so after the site went live, I checked my stats to see if readers were getting “404 File Not Found” or “This page is being redirected in a way that will never resolve” errors. I did get a few of those so I made the appropriate changes to the .htaccess file and cleared them up.

Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Because I’ve been down this road before, I knew what to do. However, the first time I transitioned a site from one platform to another, I took it one step at a time. It’s sort of like taking a cross-country road trip. You only read the part of the directions that pertain to your current location. Reading the entire list of directions only causes confusion and frustration.

Oh, and one more thing. In transitioning the site I came across a cool plugin called Smooth Slider. Smooth Slider in combination with Widget Logic allows me to display a different slider per topic.

Now that I’m done with Tidbits, I’m brainstorming on how to make changes here at NJFM in 2012. As for 2011, I think I’m done.  Errors, issues and typos will have to be fixed next year.  I’m calling my boss to tell her I’m not working for the rest of the year.

Back in the Stone Age when I first got online I barely knew what a sitemap was. I spent some time reading in various forums trying to find out what it was and if it was something important. What I read back then was that it didn’t really make a difference if you told Google about your sitemap because Google would find your content sooner or later. With info like that, I didn’t bother creating or uploading a sitemap.

Change of Heart

More recently I became a little frustrated because I added a Google Search function to one of my sites, but it proved to be useless because most of the pages of my site weren’t indexed. Without having the pages indexed, the search results were rather pitiful.

In an attempt to change that I decided to submit my sitemap to Google to help them index my entire site. While I don’t know if adding a sitemap does anything for your website’s rankings or whether or not it gets your new pages indexed faster, what I do know is that not having pages indexed in Google means that visitors can’t find them.

Results of Adding a Sitemap

On April 24th I submitted my sitemap to Google (I know the date because I checked my ‘To Done’ list). When I first added it I only had 128 pages out of over 400 pages indexed. Three days later on April 27 the number of pages indexed pages jumped from 128 to 235 pages. On April 28th the number of pages increased from 235 to 264. Yesterday (5/4/2010) I checked and I found that 436 pages of my site were indexed by Google. Wow, the power of a sitemap.

Fluke or a Process

I was so impressed with the indexing thoroughness that I decided to submit my NJFM sitemap to Google. When I first submitted it on April 28th only 190 pages were indexed. Yesterday, the number jumped to 233 pages and as of today, 336 NJFM pages are now indexed by Google.

As I said earlier, it may not improve page ranking or site popularity, but it does make it easier for readers to find my sites.

Generating Sitemaps

For my WordPress blogs, I used a plug-in called XML Sitemap Generator to generate the sitemap.

For my Joomla website I downloaded a plug-in called XMap . It creates both an XML and an HTML site map. For those of you not familiar with the XML and HTML, XML is what Google uses to index your site and HTML creates a web page that’s readable by humans.

There are also free site map generators that work just as well. Some of the free sitemap services limit the number of pages of the sitemap. Here are a couple that I found:

• Sitemap Builder (limit 1000 pages)
• XML Sitemaps (limit 500 pages).

Once you have your site map generated, log into your Google Webmaster Account and click on the “Configuration”  link to access the “Sitemap” page. All you have to do is tell Google where your site map is located and click “Submit.”

One thing I have noticed, however, is the disparity between the number of pages indexed shown in the Google Webmaster account and the actual Google search engine. The Webmaster tool shows a lower index count. I use the Google search engine to determine the total number of pages indexed because that’s how folks find my sites.

To find out the number of pages indexed using the Google search engine type “site:domainname.com” into the Google search engine (remove the quotes). Google will display the number of pages indexed.

Some time ago, I wrote a post about switching one of my Google-step-child-sites from a hand coded site to a Joomla site. I made the switch because I originally hand coded the site several years ago and things have changed since then (and I’ve learned a lot since then).

Not to belabor the point (for the folks who have heard the story before), but I originally created the site when I was new to the world of the internet, used content from free article directories plus my own content and started making money. Back then I didn’t know that original content was key and my earnings and traffic eventually plummeted along with my Google rankings.

Not wanting to give up on the site, I decided to use Joomla as the back end platform because I had great ideas and visions for the site. Joomla (WordPress on steroids) seemed to be the right tool for the job. A website with about 400 pages and a set menu structure seemed to be too complex for WordPress. Although converting my site to Joomla was a large task, I felt it was the platform that would best serve the site…until now.

Recent Observations with the Site

I’ve let the site sit dormant, sort of, over the last few months. I would add a discarded eHow or Demand Studios article to it, but pretty much let it sit. I still get a few hundred hits a day on it, but the traffic is way down from its heyday.

One of my recent observations is that each of my WordPress blog posts, whether its here on NJFM or on other less popular blogs, are indexed by Google within 10 minutes or so. My new articles on the Joomla site are indexed in a week or so, if ever. Go figure.

I’ve got a blog that I started a few months ago, and it gets indexed more quickly than the Joomla site. The Joomla site has been around for about 4 years. I added new articles each day last week and only 3 of the seven have been indexed. Hmmm…..

A Wonderful Joomla Plugin

Last night when I originally wrote this blog post it had a different ending. It’s amazing what comes to you in the quiet hours of the morning before your brain is fully up and running.

Like a bolt, the thought entered my mind “Ping.” Yep, ping services, that’s why the WordPress blogs are so quickly indexed by Google. Joomla needs a ping service to let the whole world know that new content had been added to the site.

Lo and behold as I did a search this morning I found Easy Ping  for Joomla. It’s simple to install and configure. I downloaded, installed and configured it in about 3 minutes. This little plugin saved me from converting a 400 page site into a WordPress blog.

Only Time will Tell

Over the next few weeks I’ll continue to add content to the site to see if the extension is the answer to my problem. If not…I guess I’ll have to begin the conversion process.

In the meanwhile, I’m working on switching yet another old hand coded site that I created back in the late 90’s to a WordPress blog. There’s always something to keep me busy.

The other day as I was browsing the internet (when I was supposed to be working) I came across Joomla. I don’t know what rock I’ve been hiding under, but Joomla is like WordPress on steroids. It’s a free open source content management system.

Nothing to Lose

As I’ve mentioned before, my Tidbits & Stuff site is my online playground. It allows me to learn, make mistakes, earn a few bucks, make mistakes, play around, make mistakes and find out what works and what does not. Did I mention make mistakes?

It taught me that having duplicate content isn’t really so bad because I’ve made a lot of money off of the duplicate content. It also taught me that duplicate content isn’t so good because Google doesn’t seem to like sites that use too much of it. So, if my site is already in the Google crapper, what do I have to lose if I decide to try something new?

Hand Coding vs. Professional Coding

The interent is a moving target. Back when I originally coded the site, I coded it according to the rules and recommendations of the day. As the rules changed, I didn’t change the site accordingly. It was too big and cumbersome to go through all 300 plus pages to make the necessary changes. I found a few short cuts, but no short cut was short enough to recode the entire site.

Enter Joomla

Joomla, the wonderful open source tool, does all of the heavy lifting for me. Like WordPress, the programmers are always tweaking and improving the code to keep up with the latest developments on the web. Whether its security issues, SEO improvements or faster load time, the experts are doing what experts do. Therefore, I can do what I like to do, write, play around with graphics and figure out how to make money.

What I’ve Learned So Far

Large sites use content management systems. Suite, eHow, Bukisa, HubPages, and so on all use some type of content management system to manage their content. It’s the only way they can accept new writers, share revenue and keep track of what’s going on. Joomla has all the capabilities to run a large content site, manage multiple authors, share revenue and such. The possibilities are endless (check out a few sites that use Joomla).

The Joomla Transition

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been transitioning my site from the hand coded individual page website to a Joomla content management site. Changing the look of the site is as simple as downloading a new template (I’m still searching for one that’s right). Finding, modifying and deleting content is easily managed via the Administrative back end. Being able to upload new content using an interface similar to Suite’s  makes it much easier for me to add new content to the site. Who knows, maybe with new content Google might like me again.

Time Will Tell

Besides the ease of article management, maybe with professional coding my site might begin to see the light of day in when it comes to search engine rankings. Who knows? Only time will tell.