I have a site that I put quite a few years ago done it straight-up HTML. I’ve kept it up because it is really rather popular.
I don’t do much with it other than fix an occasional error I find. Lately I’ve been entertaining the idea of converting it to Wordpress. The problem is it’s a rather large site and, in my opinion, a little complicated.
PLEASE*
Don’t just look at the homepage! I have tons of links to other parts of the site past the home page!
The other pages are what I’m most concerned about for converting.
Firstly, I’d have to ask why you want to convert it, if you’renot doing much with the site. What advantage do you see in this?
Are you familiar with Wordpress? How easy or difficult it would be to convert the site will depend, I imagine, on how familiar you are with WordPress, how adept you are at HTML/CSS, whether you can find a theme which mostly suits your needs …
I don’t use WordPress, so others will need to advise you on the actual process involved.
Well that begs the question why you’d want to do that in the first place… anyway I browsed your site a bit, and it seems your site mostly consists of displaying relational data (units, factions etc.). To some extent you may be able to represent this data with custom post types, but frankly I don’t think WP is the right tool for the job… it just seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
@John_Betong You can also install Wordpress on a localhost and there are plugins to copy the site and reinstall it on a different server.
@Philbeaux With Wordpress you would need to create a page for every page you currently have. It is also very restrictive as to what you can do. It can be frustrating to get the layout you want but saying that a lot of your pages have a similar layout so I assume you could make a template and use that for a lot of the similar pages.
Personally I would go for php; you only need a few pages and you can load the content depending on the URL.
Note: If you go the php route make sure you validate the contents of the URL before loading anything.
@Rubble,
I have always had problems trying to work locally and then get the script to work online. I prefer having an online site to test and ensure htaccess, directory permissions, database login, passwords, paths, missing image files, stylesheets, Javascript files, robots.txt, sitemaps, etc are all ok.
Reminds me of when working for a web design company that developed the site on an Apache server. Client was eventually satisfied with the demo, paid and asked for the demo to be transferred to their Microsoft IIS server…
Which should be fine, given that the Web server is just an implementation detail. If switching between Apache and IIS is hard you’re leaning on Apache functionality too much.
Yes, I am familiar with Wordpress. I have 3 other sites using Wordpress and I do like what I can do with it.
The reason I am thinking about converting is because, like I said, the site is still pretty popular (well compared to my other sites it is). There’e still alot I can do it to make it better (not to mention I could easily create content for other mods) but being it’s HTML with a few hundred pages it’s quite tedious to work with, especially the menus. I would love to keep as much of the original layout as possible but I know I would have to come up with some templates - that I’m not so familiar with but would love to learn.
Maybe try saving pageId, title, ref, category, content, etc to a database. A few hundred pages could the be easily moved all at once. Also easier to update and have common headers, populated menus, footers, etc.
Yes, I do want to use Wordpress. In my opening post I say “Could I get a little look and tell me what I’d have to do to convert to Wordpress”.
And you say …“php would be quicker and easier”. I’m sorry, but I just do not follow you. For starters, I don’t know PHP, or very little actually, so how would it be easier?
I have actually done as you suggested, made a sub-domain and just put the HTML on pages. Really wasn’t much different from what is already up.
Ok, then what are some good resources that may help me create a template (or a few different templates) that I could use across the entire site?
Or…, those of you suggesting that Wordpress isn’t the right solution - what do you suggest?
And please … something other than just “PHP”.
If you are willing to do some learning (as well as learning some PHP) you can convert your website to WordPress. You might want to read https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development first, but in general the main focus is using the Loop for any content areas, deciding which parts of your pages should be pages, posts or custom post types and setting up certain functions in your functions.php file.
The Loop…
Yes I have heard of that. Am I understanding correctly that is the main “Operation” of Wordpress? I’m sorry, but that’s the best way I can put it.
Tell me, what are some of the resources here at Sitepoint that might help me? There are so many I don’t know where to begin.
I’ll also take a look at that article on Theme Development. Thank You
@Philbeaux, State why you’re considering changing to WordPress.
It appears there’s no login use of this site, so no session management.
I can see how allowing comments related to various content might provide some usefulness + likely paid traffic will generate more income, since it appears part or all of your monetization relates to running Ad Units from Ad Networks.
When I take on a new hosting client, I always delve into their current site structure + determine if changes they have in mind, like changing to WordPress, really provides more benefit than problems.
Might be good for you to talk with smart people you know + ask for their advice. Be sure to pick people with long experience with online monetization + long experience working with WordPress.
I’m using Wordpress on a couple other sites and I like it. I want to know how I could go about converting my site to Wordpress, or some other CMS that will do the job.
I thought that’s what I was doing here.
Look, I don’t personally know anybody with “long experience with online monetization + long experience working with WordPress.” That’s the whole reason I’m asking the question at this forum.