How to migrate your web site to friendly shores.
Moving your site from large commercial companies can be a daunting task as most commercial real estate web site providers develop their services with platforms and solutions that are very proprietary and are likely not easily motivated to release their technologies. With the recent punishment delivered to Advanced Access and Real Estate Webmasters among others regarding google and yahoo indexing, I have been inundated with many requests to discuss a means of escape for people looking to save what has taken them years to build. So in answer to these requests I've finished an in depth article on the subject which will be published in The Brokers Edge Magazine, June Edition.
But first..... ethics and motives.
You should not fear your webmaster, ever!
Webmaster ethics! I despise when webmasters abuse their clients. Its one of the motivating factors in my "Top 10 Worst Webmaster Ethics Practices" soon to be published on my blog. All to often webmasters engage in such unethical behaviors as holding domains, files and written content hostage sometimes to the extent of outright threatening the very livelihood of people making the business relationship seem more like domestic violence relationship forcing you to live in the presence of a bully.
I'm telling you now there is an escape route and you can do it without pain or great expense. Even though I've fully articulated the details in the June 2007 issue, I want to touch on the summary points for your review.
Good ole painless!
In the past year and a half we have migrated a large inventory of sites from various proprietary corporate real estate hosting companies to a more user friendly solution. The motive behind each was simple. Give the site owner FULL CONTROL AGAIN so they can stop being extorted large sums of cash every time a simple request for change is made. People are smarter now then they were when the web first exploded and Realtors and Real Estate offices are more savvy about what is and isn't possible regardless of what webmasters tell them. Having made a decision at some point in the past hiring whom appeared to be a wizard now seems like a bad choice to many. And many want change.
Painless transition always meets with the number one objection we encounter which is the concern over lost links and page rank as a result of the new file structure or file extension. This is certainly a valid concern and number one on my list in any migration project we undertake.
Regardless of technology, asp, php, html, etc... all links with the exception of session based ones can be duplicated in some fashion or another. Most if not all methods include some sort of LAMP solution for hosting and Apache Rewrites to achieve this objective. LAMP = Linux Apache MySQL PHP
If you're not one of those who have endless dollars and the luxury of custom application development, opting for an established well supported existing solution is your likely course of action. Now when one says that the idea pops into the head that it always implies open-source and thats not the case. Rather than expand on this in great depth here lets look at what solutions could be used and how best to decide.
BLOGS! Realtors and Search Engines Love WordPress.
Blogs are search engine food period. In the June issue of The Brokers Edge Magazine I expose techniques and writing methods that will keep your blogs current, motivating, and keyword rich among other things all focused around WordPress. Naturally this is for good reason. WordPress in my professional opinion out ranks, out indexes, and out performs other blogs listed in the Top 5 blog solutions used by Realtors including blogger and movable type.
Now you may first question my sanity for starting out with WordPress as the first solution for migrating a site but there is a very important reason why I chose it. Here it is;
If you have an existing site, with fewer than 30 - 50 pages, largely consisting of written content, articles and some images with little else, WordPress will solve your migration in the blink of an eye. That includes matching existing design features to an extent (old code is simply that, old code) and providing you with a solid, user friendly platform, that is lightening fast and powerful to grow your site. But there's more....
WordPress the CMS? Yes. WordPress also features a template technique called "The WordPress Loop" which WordPress then behaves like a mini CMS (content management system) as feature rich as any commercial application. Need convincing? Ok,
Read This Adobe Edge Magazine Article. The site being discussed is a WordPress Loop site for a XXL Magazine.
Now to handle those existing links you so covet simple mod rewrites can be used to achieve this for the most part leaving the balance of the "All SEO and USER friendly" links to WordPress which features a pretty well thought out meta tag and link generator. Although HTACCESS can be dangerous to depend on for large numbers of rewrites and redirects, used intelligently by skilled persons, the burden on the domain can go literally un-noticed. If NOT done properly, well, -- thou shalt suffer brutal punishment until thou cries uncle -- !
Want to get started with WordPress fully modded and customized with some proprietary scripts for SEO, visit
TBE
Commercial and Non Commercial CMS systems
Joomla, Typo3, Drupal, Xoops, PROCMS, and others both commercial and non commercial have features for handling SEF and SEO URL's. The most friendly of the small inventory above is Joomla and Drupal with Typo3 being as commercial grade as one can get and just as difficult to learn for new people.
Why use a CMS to migrate from commercial solutions you already use?
CMS's make my list of migration solutions because of 4 very important critical features that will break off the chains from that psycho webmaster now holding you in captivity. 1 - 4 will summarize the reasons pretty well;
1 )
Support! of those mentioned above, all have literally thousands of professionals backing them across many disciplines. Now noteworthy for mention, two of them started out as commercial projects funded by big $$. The kind of money that very few would be privy to invest. This is YOUR benefit. If support is an issue, there is NO shortage of expertise with most of the top rated CMS solutions being used today.
2 )
Maintenance Costs! If you have ever wanted to add a feature, change a feature, alter a design but feared making mention to your existing provider for fear of "it can't be done or shouldn't be done without great expense" then a CMS is the ticket. Chances are some developer somewhere has already considered a need and likely developed a solution. With CMS systems most have hundreds of plugins, components, and modular addons to expand the basic foundation with relative ease.
When you say relative ease you can usually say relatively affordable!
3 )
Scalability Rather than show bias toward one CMS over the other as far as scalability I'll just summarize a few of the sites I created using a CMS to achieve what the site owner wanted;
Chamber of Commerce, Police Department Public Service Site, K-12 School District, Hosting Companies (x 3), Parks Department, Real Estate sites (x 30+), FSBO sites (x 4) Beauty Magazine, Makeup Magazine, Makeup Sales, Coffee Equipment Distributor and the list goes on and on and on. I've used CMS systems for the past three years and no one ever complains about ease of use, speedy learning curve and "Scalability" as some of these required LDAP authentication and login features being of government concerns. There is no question in my mind that some CMS solutions are fully flexible enough to appease most requirements.
4 )
EASE OF USE and CONTROL Last does not make it least. I can't type enough in one sitting, describing all the reasons why CMS systems return control back to the site owner for doing what they've always wanted to do but have been brow beat NOT to do by alleged real estate webmasters. If you want the power to publish COMMERCIAL GRADE sites, feature award wining content, and build a community with a loyal client following then CMS's are a logical choice.
Now before we leave this article its worthy of mention that some home grown template engines may also suffice a migration objective as VegasMack and I have used a few we came up with for things in the past. Such solutions are fine when dealing with web site owners that insist on using Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage and are certainly capable of being modified to preserve links and page rank structures.
So if you are concerned that such a transition would be painful, consider this. The last large migration I did for a client involved a site that we later discovered had hidden CC email addresses and embedded back door code by the script writer. Further we discovered that all of this clients flash files had the phone numbers altered and claims to ownership rights of the design eventually gravitated to legal action for resolution. Events like this orchestrated by an alleged real estate webmaster can cost you more now if you don't make a change. I can't even fathom why someone would want a copy of all your personal contacts reading all your email and alter your flash files. How unethical?
~ Jared
Follow the June issue for more details.