Need to convert large site to wordpress?

Hey all,

I have a large site which uses an arcade script I bought about 5 years ago that no longer provides support.

It has about 4500 pages that I would like to convert to wordpress with all the same urls. I have no worries about the theme just need to convert the site to wordpress.

What would be the easiest way to do this?

 

Did the script you bought 5 years ago quit working? If it still works, why re-invent the wheel? 4500 pages is a lot to convert so it would seem to me that it would be easier and cheaper to just not do it.

However, if the script no longer works, would it be easier to fix the problems or do a conversion? Any time you do a conversion, you will invariably run into many unexpected problems, and the conversion will usually take much longer to do than you expect.

 

The script still works and I have customized it a LOT.
I'd just like to convert to wordpress so it's a lot more easier to manage + it has more functionality and features/plugins ect than what the script I'm using does..

Thanks for your reply

 

You can read this post. I hope that it will help you to start with migration of your web site to Wordpress.
http://www.wpexplorer.com/migrate-website-wordpress/

 

If the pages are stored in a database, it should be fairly simple to convert them to Wordpress posts - what needs to be done, either afterwards or during conversion is to make sure all necessary meta-data is present for the Wordpress install to work at its best.
It also depends on whether or not you're gonna keep the exact same URL-structure as you have with your current script - if not, you'll need some .htaccess magic to make 301-rules to redirect all to the new URLs.

If the site is NOT in a database, this quickly gets a bit trickier, although still not impossible - it will just involve a bit more hand-coding to make sure you get the content you need from the files you have.

 

Thanks dragansk and thanks popsicle..
The script does store everything on a database but the tricky part will be having the site show the exact same url structure because I dont want to change it, mainly because I don't want it to affect any rankings ect..

Starting to think it is going to be one big pain in the butt and not sure if it will be worth it. It would be good to have the functionality of wordpress though.

I wonder how much a job like this would cost if I hired a freelancer?

 

Changing the URL-structure won't affect your rankings as long as you do it right. For instance with permanent 301 redirects via .htaccess.
However, depending on what structure you have today, it might not be too hard converting it - it all depends how the structure is laid out now, and if you have proper names for each page, or just load up a index.php?page=332 for instance. Not that the last won't work, it just won't do anything for ratings or look very good.
But, as I said, depending on the current setup, it shouldn't be too hard to fix for someone with a bit of experience, and as long as you have full access to whereever you're hosting the site. I'd recommend downloading a copy of the database and install wordpress, then try to write a script for converting the database entries that needs to be transferred over. Again, this might be more complicated than just reading a table and pasting it into the wp-database, since you might have interlocking tables with different meta-info in them, depending on what you've done before.
As for cost, I dunno, but depending on requirements and complications arising, I guess I would charge between $400-$800 for such a job. Less if it's really simple to do. But then again, I'm in a high-cost country.

 

Thanks again for your reply popsicle

The url structure I have is this http://www.sitename.com/category/1192/this-is-the-name-of-post.html the number in the url is the page number/id.
The script has nine main tables -
categories
comments
files
links
news
online
privatemessages
statistics
users

The ones I mainly need are files, categories and maybe links...
The files(which is the pages) has a table structure like this -
fileid
file
icon
filelocation
iconlocation
title
description
keywords
width
height
category
timesplayed
status
filetype
dateadded
rating
totalvotes
totalvotepoints

I think the more I look at it the more complicated it is getting lol. It would be good if there was a plugin for wordpress that does like an import or clone.
But I guess, life isn't meant to be that easy right

Thanks again for your help popsicle..

 

Hm. The current URL-structure seems quite good for converting, actually, although I'm not entirely sure the number-bit is gonna be super-easy (I've actually never created something with numbers like that in the URL-path of a Wordpress-site - I'm sure it's possible, though). Or you could just make a .htaccess-rules for sending <domain><category>/number/<title> to <domain><category>/<title> instead. Would mean you'd need unique titles, at least pr. category.
You'll need some sort of plugin if you want to keep the ratings (Wordpress doesn't support ratings natively), and of course, if you wanna keep users (for linking with comments and such), you'll need a way to pull that information into WP as well. If that last part isn't that important, you could just use WPs standard comments-plugin, or add Disqus or Facebook comments, or use a theme which support a comment system out of the box.
I'm assuming these are pages for games, or videos or something like that? Regardless, I don't think importing it into Wordpress would be that hard - I suggest pulling a small sample - say 10-20 records from the database, and try to write a script to read from the old table into the content-table of Wordpress, and see what it looks like "barebones" - then do changes depending on what the result is.
Again, I have no idea what this should cost, but it doesn't really look too complicated.

 

Once again thanks for your reply and help popsicle. Really appreciate it.
I will have a go at it on the weekend when I get some free time. I think if I can't work it out by then I'll hire someone or just leave it as is and maybe try and add some features to the script I already use?

Thanks heaps buddy!