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Hi guys,

I have a question for one of my sites. Its built on Joomla 1.0.X. Its a tourist portal and it have around 200-250 articles, more than 400 hotels on alberghi component and a few hundreds huts based on SOBI2. The site doesn't have any kind of friendly URLs. Now I've set up a Joomla 1.5 installation for it and move all the articles and huts. For the hotels I decided to go with a new component - Pages and Items - (check it out it's amazing what you can do with this component). For the new J1.5 site I will have SEO friendly URLs with mod_rewrite turned on.

So far so good. My question is what about all the links and urls that will suddenly be 404. The old site is about 1.5 years old and it have some inbound links to it and it also is well placed for some keywords on google. There's also links from many directories pointing to it. Can I preserve these links without manual mod_rewrite (there are hundreds of items). What about the position of the pages in google? If I just delete the old site and go ahead with the new I think it's going to be like a start of a brand new site?

Please anyone with experience or suggestion is welcome to discuss that.

No one with an idea?

No one with an idea?

the fact that you switched to 1.5 is not the issue ... the turning on seo is........... i think with .htacess you can add rewrites for all old urls to new ones...

Hardcoding links in Joomla is never a good idea. As operator mentioned if you had the Search Engine Optimization features on and have adjusted your .htaccess file accordingly w/ mod-rewrite enabled it'd not be an issue as the URL's exposed to search engines would not have the ?option=com_content etc etc.

But... fact is with almost any dynamic tpye of website the indexing that search engines do results in 404's when people change the sites software and unfortunately in the case of Joomla 1.0 -> 1.5 migration has not really been pursued by the Joomla core or third parties. In fact there has been a "call" by some of the inner circle to third parties to create the software to migrate sites. I am much more "spiffy" on Joomla 1.5 programming than 1.0 and in considering that call to action I'd thought about what a mess it'd be. Content migration really shouldnt be horrid but one starts thinking of third party comes, mod's, bots on and on... YUCK!

Normally when sites move to differing pieces of software they'll redirect 404 through their host control panel to the homepage. This essentially will force the search engines to re-index the site irregardless and that would have to be done irregardless.

Hardcoding links in Joomla is never a good idea. As operator mentioned if you had the Search Engine Optimization features on and have adjusted your .htaccess file accordingly w/ mod-rewrite enabled it'd not be an issue as the URL's exposed to search engines would not have the ?option=com_content etc etc.

But... fact is with almost any dynamic tpye of website the indexing that search engines do results in 404's when people change the sites software and unfortunately in the case of Joomla 1.0 -> 1.5 migration has not really been pursued by the Joomla core or third parties. In fact there has been a "call" by some of the inner circle to third parties to create the software to migrate sites. I am much more "spiffy" on Joomla 1.5 programming than 1.0 and in considering that call to action I'd thought about what a mess it'd be. Content migration really shouldnt be horrid but one starts thinking of third party comes, mod's, bots on and on... YUCK!

Normally when sites move to differing pieces of software they'll redirect 404 through their host control panel to the homepage. This essentially will force the search engines to re-index the site irregardless and that would have to be done irregardless.

Manually set up 301 redirects?

So the best will be to redirect (301, 302?) to the new index page? Or display a page with text - this link is outdated blah blah - please go to our new site, if you're not redirected after 5 sec click here...? I'm wondering what will happen with my indexing from the search engines. I mean, how long it will take to regain my previous positions in the result pages?

About the other replies for a 301, 302 with mod_rewrite  - as I stated "Can I preserve these links without manual mod_rewrite (there are hundreds of items)". I don't think that it's an option to add several hundreds redirects using mod_rewrite.

Manually set up 301 redirects?

So the best will be to redirect (301, 302?) to the new index page? Or display a page with text - this link is outdated blah blah - please go to our new site, if you're not redirected after 5 sec click here...? I'm wondering what will happen with my indexing from the search engines. I mean, how long it will take to regain my previous positions in the result pages?

About the other replies for a 301, 302 with mod_rewrite  - as I stated "Can I preserve these links without manual mod_rewrite (there are hundreds of items)". I don't think that it's an option to add several hundreds redirects using mod_rewrite.

Its really not possible to preserve the links as Joomla 1.5 is going to generate pages that are different URL's. Even if you had SEO enabled (or not)  the ID parameters passed in Joomla SEO will be different.

Sometimes its hard to gauge whether its "worth" upgrading sites, been there myself. I went through this kinda strange scenario last year. I was hired by a local gay (LGBT) organization... no... I am not a gay kat, but I dont have issues with anyone, when the Lord God appoints me as judge and jury... ferget' that... dont want the job, after all... what would humanity do if we all just respected each other and worked towards a common future? MeOW!!!

Anyways, their prior "Webmaster" did krapski work. But they were informed 1 week before their host bellied up that their host was bellying up. So this webmaster gets them a new host, FTP's the entire site DIRECT from one host to the other, exports the database etc. Welp, new host he BRIGHTLY selected runs ALL applications under a root/system account! So... nothing friggin' worked, all the directory permissions all AFU. They tried get back hold of him to do the work, FIX IT! He disappeared essentially.

So... I get a call about the work. I answer the phone, "Mello! Meow are Mew?". I put on my cat paw nail extensions and get typing... I call them back, "Mew was Mew'r Webmaster? A mootant? A Muman being? Mew must be kitten me!"

The old host, gone by the time they called me in on the catastrophe (<--- HA!). (Cat-ass-trophy)

So get things workin' at a basic level, use a Joomla backup com to slap it all into one tarball. Pull it down, fix it in Xampp. Send it back up... they were astonished . Took a few meowers... I mean hours. You dont redirect via Mod-Rewrite.

http://www.404-error-page.com/301-apache-h...-redirect.shtml

But they lost ALL of the search indexing... not that it made much a difference since they never set much up for good SEO (or even bad SEO for that matter!).

They ended up hiring me to reface the entire place and now working on a contract for putting their print newspaper online. Mewcus!

So its really a "Is it worth it" type thang and thats what you need weigh.

If a site is not performing well for you given its intended goals then scrappin' things really dont matter.

If it makes revenue or is importanto then you must weigh *IF* a another make can do better *OR* whether its wiser to set up ANOTHER site independent of the first. Regain that search engine ranking, then in time dump the old site and redirect that domain.

There are always options... but attempting to get J 1.5 to grok the same URL's as 1.0 would be a tremendous pain in the nutz.

I forgot about the same URLs even before I started . However miraculously I found that the SOBI2 entries are actually going to preserve the old URLs because this component doesn't benefit from the core joomla  SE friendly URLs. I also thought of a possibility to make a whole new site, but then 99% percent of its content will be the same as the first one and google doesn't like such stuff. The original site isn't performing very well and we want to SHINE IN A NEW RAY OF LIGHT with the new one, but I want to preserve even the minimal community that's on it along with the connections to hotels and tourist agencies so the option in front of me is - preserve the old name and domain and just wait for google to re-index the site (and hopefully get the search positions back alongside with a new ones) or launching the new site with a new domain and name and transfer all of the visitors from the old one to the new one for one year maybe. Our team decided to go with the old name and domain so I just wanted to know if there's a trick for the URLs of the old articles but I got that there isn't one, so we will wait for the re-index of the site.

However I wanted to ask you something more on SEF URL's. What are your opinions on J1.5 core SEF URL's and other components for that? Please don't just post extension X is the best I'm using it - tell us WHY it's the best and WHY YOU are using it .

Use Extension "X"!!!!!!!!

Thats the one from that TV show the ummm... "X Flies".... err files.

Lookie... Mew'r considering of movement from Joom-la-la 1.0 to Joom-la-la 1.5 brings some advantages, namely... everyone's building for 1.5... Even your's truly. In as far as SEO efficiency go's in 1.5 its kinda up to the authors of components. The "Front end" looks for a file called "Router.php" which essentially is where data that would be in a "GET" (the URL command line if you will) can be manuevered into something nicer. J 1.5 DOES have a ability to add ".HTML" to the ends of pages... a plus, but, search engines are bright enough that they will still realize it is dynamically generated content. I am currently working ona  commercial component (which I am sure will appear here robbing me of numerous friskee's boxes but... hey, thats reality... who am I to change it?). I actually know how to "protect" components and modules without the use of say Ioncube that'd give programmers contortions to try and work around).... Maybe someday. My component in one of its varied releases will generate pure static HTML cuz'... its the most search engine friendly way of having sex with a search engine without getting communicable diseases resulting in loss of ranking not to mention diseased private parts.

Now I'd imagine some components are prolly out there that "Override" Joomla native SEO to try and yet do a better job of URL re-writing but really.... Its only one part of the equation.

Search Engine traffic is often not the best way to generate traffic. But, that depends on the site and its function. I always try and think "outside of the box"... cuz'... as a cat thinking in the box means I am sleeping in my own poops! LOL.

Site success revolves around strategy, planning, execution and opening up as many prospect doors to visitor attraction as one can. Once they are at a site then the goal is not only inform them... give them the reason that they came to begin with but also to retain them.