I used my holiday time to convert one of my own static sites. I wanted to use it as a case study in procedure and time. The site I converted was my Scripts and Database site, CyberCoded.com. This is one of my older sites and I have been too busy to convert it so I continued to manually add pages as needed.

I have about 10 hours invested in the whole process to convert this site. The bulk of the time is in the custom coding of a WordPress Theme from scratch to match an older site. There were 12 pages when I started and as some of the pages had different extensions I decided to convert the site using my favorite WordPress permalink structure and then redirect the old pages.

I used my Blank WordPress Theme so that I could start with a clean slate and match the design to the old site.

Here are the steps I took.

1. Installed WordPress in a Sub Folder
   • Set Privacy setting to OFF while I developed the site in a sub folder.
   • Modified the permalink to my favorite which is /%postname%/
2. Installed the Blank theme in the WordPress Themes folder.
   • I used FTP to upload the files into a new theme folder in WordPress.
3. Copied and matched elements from the old Style.css file into the WordPress Style.css
   • The blank theme has an empty CSS file.
   • The Body and Links were the only elements called out in the old CSS file.
   • Added Wrapper, Content, Header and Footer Divs to CSS.
4. Copied the Index.php file to home.php so I could have a custom Home page that would match the old page.
   • Simply copying the file like this makes a new home page with the home.php file.
5. Modified the WordPress code in the Home page to show each category and posts as lists.
   • Stripped out the common WordPress Loop
   • Created new code that loops through the categories and list each post per category.
   • Set the Category to sort in Descending order.
   • Set the Post titles to sort Title in ascending order
6. Created an Analytics.php file in the WordPress Theme to use throughout the site.
   • Retrieved the code from Google to use for analytics.php
7. Created a Header.php file within the WordPress Theme to add common header elements.
   • Modified the Title so that it would be SEO friendly, very similar to most popular SEO plugins.
   • Added a call to analytics.php file
8. Created a footer.php file in WordPress to add a common footer.
   • Used the code from the old static footer file for contact and info.
9. Created Single.php page
   • Added a Tweet This button from Twitter.
10. Created my Categories to match old site.
    • The old site had headers for each item type which I converted to Categories.
11. Copied each page from the old site into Textpad and removed any code that would interfere with WordPress.
12. Pasted each page into WordPress as a Post.
13. Created Tag Page.
    • Tag page list the excerpt for each Post that is tagged.
14. Created custom 404 page.
    • The 404 page shows a tag cloud to visitors.
15. Created Search page.
    • Search page only shows title for a matched post.
16. Widgetized and added a sidebar.
    • Create and set widgets in the functions.php file.
    • Add sidebar.php and corresponding code to use widgets.
    • Added a Facebook Like button.
    • Added RSS Button and link.
17. Copied the index.php from the WordPress sub folder to the root and modified the code to use WordPress from the Sub Folder.
18. Changed the Site Address within WordPress Admin to set the site in the root while leaving WordPress installed in the sub folder.
19. Redirected the old pages to the new WordPress pages using PHP header calls.
20. Installed and setup XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress Plugin

ALL DONE !

I copied the old Index file so we can see a before and after look.

Original Page versus New WordPress Site.

Most of the time was in the Theme setup. Each page took about 5 minutes to convert the content to a WordPress Post.

12 Pages, 10 hours

Think I will send my wife a bill and see if it gets paid, lol…

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RT @JoeManna: My thoughts on Twitter's Impact on Blogging: http://tinyurl.com/dl4uj6 Would love your feedback. #

RT @b10m: Aren't most services born out of a need to scratch a personal itch? @namecheap could launch a contest to show off API usage #

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Why do something that someone else has already done, and especially if it is actually easier to use their program than it is to do it myself?

The best example of this is WordPress Plugins. For the longest time I would code everything myself. As an example I did my own SEO programming and it worked well, but, I discovered as I moved from blog to blog I had to do a lot of extra work that I would not have to do if I had used a WordPress Plugin. So I started looking to replace all my custom programming with WordPress plugins, and I can not tell you how much easier it is to manage my blogs now.

I also found that in some cases the plugins were better than what I had done myself, ouch. But hey, that is the idea, use the software that gets the job done and is the easiest to maintain. I will say that in some cases I think a particular WordPress plugin can be improved, in that case I try to do one of two things, improve it and send it to the originator, or comment on the originating blog and give them my idea.

Here is a list of my current favorite WordPress plugins I am using on the majority of my blogs.

Akismet

All in One SEO Pack

Custom Query String Reloaded

CyberExcerpt

Get Recent Comments

Google Analytics

Google XML Sitemaps

Recommended Tags

Show Top Commentators

WP-ContactForm

Using WordPress Plugins can certainly help you manage your blog better without all the additional work. Just make sure to test each plugin carefully before rolling out in full production. I have found some plugins may cause problems with other plugins and that even the order in which you install them can sometimes cause issues. The best thing to do is setup a sub domain with WordPress that is not indexed in the search engines and use it as a test site.

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Not sure what it says about us, but key that headline into Google and you get 313,000,000 results. Yes, that’s 313 Million.

Everybody says they hate the get rich quick schemes, yet someone is digging for them and trying them.

Anyway, if you want to get rich quick, I certainly can not help you, if I could, I would and I would be rich myself. However, I may be able to help you at least pay for your hosting and buy dinner out.

I work on a site for a customer that had these numbers last month.

287 unique visitors, $52 of income.

Now, I realize that is not very much money. However, if you do that twice you can get a check for over $100 every month. And in my book $100 is worth something.

287 visitors is an average of 9 visitors a day, THAT IS ALL, 9.

C’mon, how hard can that be? And the total size of the site is 14 pages. Oh yeah, static pages, not a blog, just a good ol’ basic 14 page website. We have not changed ANYTHING in over a year.

Here is my punch list for this site.

1. Focused Content – One subject, very little variance. They call this a “niche site” now, we used to call it a “small vertical market”.
2. Google Adsense. – 2 Ad Units. One 336×280 above the fold, one 336×280 at the very bottom of the page, right after the last piece of content. The colors used are blended into the site, and each ad title is dark blue. Always use a blue because people still tend to thing a blue underline is a link.
3. Sitemap. – Real simple. I use GSiteCrawler to build and upload the sitemap. Submitted to Google and Yahoo using their respective web pages.
4. Analytics. – I like Google Analytics, it’s simple, web based and I can have all my accounts at my fingertips.

Summary:

Always remember the old KISS rule, Keep It Simple, Stupid, or maybe now it should be Keep It Search Simple.

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1. Register Domain
2. Setup hosting
3. Install WordPress and change Permalink structure
4. Install Robots.txt file
5. Publish a few posts
6. Setup on Feedburner and place RSS links on page.
7. Create and upload Sitemap
8. Submit to Google Webmaster Central
9. Submit to Yahoo Site Explorer
10. Install Google Analytics

I will go through each of these steps in individual posts.

The last blog I setup was in the Google Index within 48 hours, and away we go……

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