13 replies to this topic

[Tim]

froment, on 26 January 2012 - 02:10 PM, said:

Given that you may want to give a chance to some other software/CMS in the future, I'd have another advice, if you don't mind, from my own experience...

It works if your hosting provider offers CPanel; if it's some other control panel, advice is still applicable, but bit more complicated.

Let's say you create your site in root directorium; that means your site is available at address, let's say, www.mysite.com.

One day you may decide to change design of your site, or to test another software, or whatever; that means you need to remove all files of old site from root folder, and place there files of new site. That may be a hassle, so this is my workaround:

I never create site content in the root directorium; I always create a subdirectorium and place entire content there. So, if I were you, I'd install Wordpress in a subdirectorium, let's say, www.mysite.com/wordpress (but choose more suitable title than "wordpress", it would be awkward; the shorter word, the better, in my opinion), and then from CPanel create permanent redirection from www.mysite.com to www.mysite.com/wordpress. Address of your site remains www.mysite.com, but visitors are seamlessly redirected to www.mysite.com/wordpress, where your site actually resides.

I said permanent redirection, not temporary, as it tells search engines to consider content of subdirectorium as content of main site, so your site will be listed for related searches anyway.

One day you're not satisfied with Wordpress features, and want to explore Joomla or whatever else; so you create another subdirectorium, let's say www.mysite.com/joomla, and work and test it without impacts to existing site. Once you've done and want to switch to new design, you just change redirection in CPanel, and new site is in place, without any downtime at all (otherwise, you'd have either to launch new site without testing, either to close it down for maintenance, either to move files from testing directorium to root directorium, which requires adjustments in database and Wordpress / Joomla / etc. installation itself).

Naturally, you can have as many subdirectoriums as you want, so that gives you endless possibilities of developing and testing various versions and content of the site, without interfering with each other at all. You can add photo gallery as I mentioned earlier, forum, ticket system, etc., all in different subdirectoriums, and once you're satisfied how they perform, just insert link from main site to them, and they're live.

I said in the beginning this works easily with CPanel (at Linux hosting), since it offers redirection possibility (in fact, it edits .htaccess file in root directorium; you can open that file before and after redirection, to see the difference). Windows hosting usually comes with Plesk control panel, which does not offer redirection, and does not have .htaccess either; so you would have to create one manually, to add redirection code, and then to upload it to server and check if it works...

That's actually a really, really good piece of advice. It would certainly give you a much better opportunity to try out all the different content management systems available without the hassle of deleting and moving files. One quick question though, what's the code you need to place inside the .htaccess for a permanent redirection? I might actually be interested in using this on one of my website.

[froment]

Tim, on 27 January 2012 - 04:22 AM, said:

One quick question though, what's the code you need to place inside the .htaccess for a permanent redirection?

This is the code:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mysite\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.mysite\.com\/newdirectorium" [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mysite\.com$
RewriteRule ^olddirectorium\/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.mysite\.com\/newdirectorium" [R=301,L]


Now, first three lines redirect mysite.com AND www.mysite.com (it's important to ensure redirection nevermind if one types URL with or without www) to www.mysite.com/newdirectorium.

Next three lines do the same, but they redirect www.mysite.com/olddirectorium (again with or without www) to www.mysite.com/newdirectorium. Of course, "olddirectorium" is directorium where you had your old site, and "newdirectorium" is the new one you want to launch, so you need to replace those words with correct names of those subdirectoriums.

Reason for this is that some people will bookmark what they see in their browser's address bar, which is www.mysite.com/olddirectorium; so this way, they get properly redirected, too.

You can add as many those redirections as you want, just follow the pattern above.

Sign that may look like capital letter V in the code above is not V, it's in fact backslash and slash without space in between!

Part [R=301,L] says it's permanent redirection; for temporary, it's 302.

Though, as I said, if you have CPanel, there is no need for all this code; you can manage all that from Redirects section in CPanel; you just may download and compare .htaccess before and after redirecting, so you can see what the code is - that's how I got the code above.

As I said, Windows hosting does not offer .htaccess (neither Plesk offers redirection, or at least I could not find it), so I once created .htaccess and uploaded in root directorium, and it worked; though, I'm not sure if it would work in each Windows hosting, you would have to check it yourself.

Additionaly, there is another possibility from CPanel: Wild Card Redirect; that means, if you have exactly the same structure and the same file names in old and new subdirectorium, you can redirect page from the old directorium to the page with the same name in new directorium. I don't know what the code is for that option, as I haven't used it.

[Tim]

froment, on 27 January 2012 - 07:46 AM, said:

This is the code:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mysite\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.mysite\.com\/newdirectorium" [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mysite\.com$
RewriteRule ^olddirectorium\/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.mysite\.com\/newdirectorium" [R=301,L]


Now, first three lines redirect mysite.com AND www.mysite.com (it's important to ensure redirection nevermind if one types URL with or without www) to www.mysite.com/newdirectorium.

Next three lines do the same, but they redirect www.mysite.com/olddirectorium (again with or without www) to www.mysite.com/newdirectorium. Of course, "olddirectorium" is directorium where you had your old site, and "newdirectorium" is the new one you want to launch, so you need to replace those words with correct names of those subdirectoriums.

Reason for this is that some people will bookmark what they see in their browser's address bar, which is www.mysite.com/olddirectorium; so this way, they get properly redirected, too.

You can add as many those redirections as you want, just follow the pattern above.

Sign that may look like capital letter V in the code above is not V, it's in fact backslash and slash without space in between!

Part [R=301,L] says it's permanent redirection; for temporary, it's 302.

Though, as I said, if you have CPanel, there is no need for all this code; you can manage all that from Redirects section in CPanel; you just may download and compare .htaccess before and after redirecting, so you can see what the code is - that's how I got the code above.

As I said, Windows hosting does not offer .htaccess (neither Plesk offers redirection, or at least I could not find it), so I once created .htaccess and uploaded in root directorium, and it worked; though, I'm not sure if it would work in each Windows hosting, you would have to check it yourself.

Additionaly, there is another possibility from CPanel: Wild Card Redirect; that means, if you have exactly the same structure and the same file names in old and new subdirectorium, you can redirect page from the old directorium to the page with the same name in new directorium. I don't know what the code is for that option, as I haven't used it.

You're an absolute legend! Thank you very much for that!

[monte1212]

Wordpress and joomla are cms software to design exclusive web site. Between them I will prefer wordpress than joomla. thanks.

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Edited by Tim, 08 February 2012 - 08:06 AM.