Help with utilising an old site's URLs

scottmccloud · Oct 28, 2015

I want to put a new site on an old domain that I now own. The domain was previously used and some of the pages have some nice links to them which I obviously want to make the most of.

To make the most of these, is just a case of structuring my site and using the same URLs for these pages?

The other issue I've got is that every page ends with a .php. Do my new pages need to include this? If so, is it just a case of adding it on or will I need a plugin (I'm using Wordpress).

Many thanks!

Scott

mat · Oct 28, 2015

You can keep the page structure the same/similar and for any pages that will change name create 301 redirect rules in your .htaccess file. There are also Wordpress plugins that will do it for you from the Wordpress admin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

I would only redirect old pages to new pages that contain the same/similar content as the old page.

Also I would not keep the pages with php at the end, instead redirect them to the new format.

baldidiot · Oct 28, 2015

You could rebuild the old site structure to keep the old links, or you could redirect them to relevant pages (plenty of plugins for this). Just make sure that the old page and the new page are somehow related, don't just chuck them all to the home page or category pages.

For the .php in the URL, rather than make your site use that ending I'd rewrite the old URL's using htaccess. Or redirect if there aren't that many and you want to restructure the site anyway.