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I am looking for advice on the steps to take to re-structure my website. We currently have an osCommerce based site in the root of the site (i.e. mysite.com/index.php).

Our plan is to have a CMS based site as the main site (at mysite.com), and have a new e-commerce site as a sub-domain (store.mysite.com).

The existing osCommerce site is well ranked in Google, Bing & Yahoo, and we'd dearly love to retain as much SE ranking goodness during and after the changes.

I had thought the steps would be to 1) move the current site to a sub-domain, 2) place the new CMS based site in the root, and 3) when that lot has "settled in", replace the e-commerce site with a new version.

Does this sound about right? If so, what's the best strategy on implementing wholesale redirects from mysite.com to store.mysite.com in the first step? (We have about 70-80 pages on the site including product pages).

I would very much appreciate any help or advice before I embark on this onerous task.

TIA

Edit: We're replacing the old osCommerce site because it is out of date, heavily modified and the design is old and needs replacing. The company has more services that it offers now, so a CMS would suit our website better, but still with a more modern e-commerce site.

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  • Could you plz explain why you want to replace the e-commerce site with a CMS site with a troe underneath.
    – Marco Demaio
    Nov 23, 2010 at 21:26
  • Thanks for explaining, I thought you wanted to do this for SEO purpose.
    – Marco Demaio
    Nov 24, 2010 at 15:19

1 Answer 1

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Check out this question. Basically, take an inventory of all existing URLs and make sure that you redirect them to the new URLs using a 301 redirect. Also, you should try to keep the content, titles, and metadata the same as much as possible, even if you change templates, so you'll want an inventory of that as well. You may find that you also want to change your navigation and link structure. That's fine, but realize that it could possibly impact your SEO as well, for better or worse.

In short, be meticulous. Also, don't be surprised if you have a temporary dip in traffic or rankings. It'll take Google a little while to sort through everything. Don't panic, just wait it out a few weeks.

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  • Thanks for the reply - very useful information. So if I understand correctly, I would use 301's to redirect after moving the existing e-commerce site to a subfolder, and then modify these redirects to point to the new pages on the new e-commerce site when that is live.
    – Stuart Clennett
    Nov 24, 2010 at 9:18
  • I think a better bet would be to develop the new site on a local server until it is ready and then replace the existing site with it. So, 1) catalog all of your existing URLs, titles, descriptions, and metadata, 2) develop the new site locally, 3) replace the old site with the new site when it is ready, 4) redirect all the old URLs to the new URLs. I really wouldn't move the old site. Just replace it all at once. It's less work and you have less downtime. If you need a local server for PHP, check out XAMPP (apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html). It's easy to install and setup.
    – Virtuosi Media
    Nov 24, 2010 at 10:54
  • Thank you very much Virtuosi, I'll go with that as a plan. Stu.
    – Stuart Clennett
    Nov 24, 2010 at 12:56
  • "...few weeks" maybe it's better saying "few months". :)
    – Marco Demaio
    Nov 24, 2010 at 15:18

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