Site Redesign

[Andysp68]

I have a website which is 4 years old and is in need of updating.

It gets some reasonable traffic for the business I run and has a good page ranking relative to the competition.

I am thinking of changing the design and layout and maybe even using another method of creating it. At present Im using an off the shelf template which I have amended using Dreamweaver. Im thinking of using Wordpress or something similar.

Can someone tell me if making these changes will effect, the ranking, traffic etc.

Thanks

Andy

 

[Admin]

Set up your .htaccess (assuming Apache server) to redirect any unfound pages to your homepage or replacement page.

Create a sitemap of your existing site and make a redirect for every page or set the new system to use the same URLs.

Takes a bit of work but it's worth it.

How many pages is the site?

 

[Andysp68]

Thanks admin, I was with you all the up to "set up your"

That sort of talk is all alien to me. Like I said I just downloaded a template and played with it on Dreamweaver until I kind of liked it.

I was advised to do a validity check on W3c which I have now done and subsequently found 25 errors. I will not try to fix these as I never wrote the code in the first place and at least I having something to show at the moment.

I have gotten bored with the look and feel so I really want to do a revamp the easiest possible way with little disruption to the traffic etc.

I have some other projects which I would also like to move on, so what Im trying to do is get an understanding of the best/easiest way to create a full (ish) site and then use the same methods to utilise some other domains I have sitting dormant.

Apologies for non clarity but I never knew there was so much to this "knocking up a website" game. lol

Thanks

Andy

 

[holgate]

I may be wrong but....

One of our busiest business's is viable only because of it's position with Google, it's been first up for years. I was terrified of updating it but knew it was getting old fashioned looking so I slowly altered each page by making an addition ie. popped a bit of flash into the header kept all of the text the same just jiggled it about, slowly but surely by adding to it page wise and not subtracting anything from it (even down to renaming any swapped jpegs the same as the ones I was replacing) kept/keeps it in pole position and our telephones constantly ringing!!

Im sure there are technical ways around my Luddite behaviour, but after taking a broad consensus of opinion from the experts and realising they all had a different spin I though my way would be the safest.

Thats just my opinion though.....I am no expert.

 

[developdomains]

you can use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ to generate a sitemap

print it out and then make sure that when you've finished building ur new site that u either have the file names the same as your sitemap or you have redirected them to another page on your site.

alternatively, grab hold of a copy of your local Doorstep directory. Our one here in Iver has an advert for a guy who will provide one-to-one training for £25 per hour on dreamweaver/web design stuff. book a couple of hours with them until your confident about going alone.

 

[Andysp68]

Thanks MWT.

Im actually in Reading, which isnt too far away. Are you any good with Dreamweaver and Web Design?

Andy

 

[retired_member32]

Thanks admin, I was with you all the up to "set up your"

That sort of talk is all alien to me. Like I said I just downloaded a template and played with it on Dreamweaver until I kind of liked it.

I was advised to do a validity check on W3c which I have now done and subsequently found 25 errors. I will not try to fix these as I never wrote the code in the first place and at least I having something to show at the moment.

I have gotten bored with the look and feel so I really want to do a revamp the easiest possible way with little disruption to the traffic etc.

I have some other projects which I would also like to move on, so what Im trying to do is get an understanding of the best/easiest way to create a full (ish) site and then use the same methods to utilise some other domains I have sitting dormant.

Apologies for non clarity but I never knew there was so much to this "knocking up a website" game. lol

Thanks

Andy

that is not bad only getting 25 errors,there is a big thing about validation some use it all the time and some never,but you could easily validate with not to much trouble using w3c itself,when you go onto w3c and it says under the domain "options" and under there it says "clean up markup with html tidy" tick the box and revalidate it will show at the bottom coding,just copy and go into dreamweaver on the page you have just tried to validate and delete the code that is there and paste the code from w3c,if you are not sure how to do this what i would do is duplicate the index/home page again then if you go wrong at least this is not shown on the web,if you need help just pm me,if you would like a new look then i would opt for wordpress.

all the best

mark

 

[toronto-seo]

Try to keep the URLs as they are and do 301 to the new URLs in case of any chages
Asuuming that your content will stay the same then you shoudnt find any problem