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I'm thinking about migrating a client's website from a super-old cms (xoops) to WP. However the site is quite old so I don't want him to lose any SEO juice he acquired through the years (PR: 2). Anything I'd have to consider doing the migration? (I was thinking about setting up WP on a separate folder and then moving it to root for the full migration - anything I have to consider here?)

Thanks a lot!

Edit: Mike Hudson (comment below) made me aware of an error. I thought PR = Ranking in the results. Meaning: I'm more concerned with the ranking than the PR, so redirect is the way to go! Thanks folks!

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4 Answers 4

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You should use a sitemap module to generate a list of URLs created by XOOPs [e.g. xSitemap].

Then you have to set up your .htaccess to 301 redirect each URL to its corresponding page in the new Wordpress instance.

Finally, you should consider installing a Wordpress plugin like Redirection to check for 404s and redirect them nicely to the new instance.

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Thanks your help! But what if I built the WP page exactly like the XOOPs page and I don't want to redirect a thing(because rebuilt on WP from scratch with same content). Would I still lose the PR etc? –  ernesto50 Aug 18 '11 at 8:43
If the pages have the exact same URLs, there should be no loss of reputation or Page Rank. I think in practice though, your URLs will end up changing - reorganised content, a better URL structure, change in categories, etc. so it's good to plan for that case. –  Ciaran Aug 18 '11 at 9:13
*for Ok, gotcha. Then I'll redirect through 301 because the link structure changes completely. –  ernesto50 Aug 18 '11 at 10:49

Use 301 redirections in your htaccess file from old URLs to the new URLs and you will be fine

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You don't have to redirect anything, just ensure the WordPress installation uses the same URL structure as the old CMS.

The Page Rank of 2 only applies to the home-page of the site - not the site itself (Side note: if you're concerned about Page Rank then you should read this). If you're referring to ranking, that's a different story, but changing CMS's will hardly have a negative effect unless you modify the way in which the spiders discover/crawl/index the site.

If you can't maintain the old URL structure, then of course you'll have to ensure the old URLs are 301 redirected to the new one (simplest way is through a pattern-based redirection in htaccess, or using a redirection plugin).

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Edited my question. In my case I'll have to use a redirect though. Thanks for clearing that up! –  ernesto50 Aug 18 '11 at 12:18

If your site is too massive, set 301 redirect to most important pages and those with backlinks. Redirecting each page may cause overload for the server and the site will load slower. You should check for the robots.txt. - the pages change, and you may want to reconsider what's open for indexation and what's not.

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