html pages with Socrates look.feel

[dmanning]

We love our recently installed Socrates theme. Here is what it looks like.
http://www.familybusinessstrategies.com/

However we have a great many html pages that we would like to convert to the look and feel of the theme - without changing the seo attributes such as the url as they are well ranked and visited several hundred times a month.
http://www.familybusinessstrategies....s02/86210.html

Is there an html template or some way to achieve this?

Thanks

dmanning

[lynnth]

There are several aspects to this. If you want to keep the URL the same for all of these pages to maintain their current ranking in Google you will probably want a redirection plug-in that redirects from the current URL for each page to the new page under Socrates/WordPress. In that way Google and site visitors that are coming to the pages based on the URL will find them "unchanged".

As far as the content of each page, you can copy the HTML for the center column of each of those pages and paste it into the HTML view of the post editor. You may have to touch-up some of the HTML if it includes any paths or styling that is no longer appropriate.

[dmanning]

Thank you for your help. As I understand it I could install a plugin such as
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/ and then enter the existing url into it someplace along with the new target page (after creating it of course)

The result would be that the search engines would see the original unchanged and the people would be seamlessly redirected to when the updated content resides.

Going forward these newly created pages would be updated along with the other wordpress pages.

Thanks again,

DM

[lynnth]

Yes - But I would create your content as posts rather than pages. Posts have all of the capability of pages plus additional options that have more SEO value.

[Jason1]

I also have a static site that I want to move over to wordpress (using Socrates theme) and while the file names keep the same url paths. (they all end in .htm). Would you know if I will be able to move the files and still maintain the same file names.

I believe I need to install wordpress in the root directory and move my files into this new folder. I want there to be a seamless transition and also have the current static site viewable while I'm redesigning the site in wordpress.

Do you know how easy/difficult this will be and can it be done?

Tks.
Jason

[lynnth]

You can have both of them installed on the root of your domain but only one can be displayed at any one time. I Assume your static site has an index.htm file. WordPress has index.php. Rename the one that you do not want active to have an underbar symbol in front of it. So for the static site rename index.php to _index.php. When you want the WordPress installation to go live, rename it back to index.php and rename index.htm to _index.htm.

[Jason1]

My entire static site has the file ext. ending in .htm and I have lots and lots of sites linking back to many .htm pages.

Even though wordpress is .php, how can I keep all those pages ending in .htm so the incoming links will still work?

I'm also working with my hosting service but a second opinion is always good.

I'm sure people move over there reg. sites to Wordpress and this is doable with minimum headaches.

[lynnth]

See my discussion with dmanning earlier in this thread. You would need a redirection plug-in to redirect from the .htm URLs to the new WordPress URLs.

[dmanning]

I installed the wordpress plugin, then I created new posts for a few of the pages and using the plugin redirected as permanent 301's the existing html pages to the newly created posts.

It looks good except that no redirect happens - even when I click the original link on a completely different computer that had never visited either the original page or the target page before. What do you think I am missing?

Thanks

[lynnth]

Please post an example of the two URLs (original and new WordPress URL) for the same page. I'll take a look.