Moving static site to a new domain (WordPress)

[GeekChick]

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of trying to move a static HTML site to a new domain. On the new domain, I'm using WordPress.

The situation is this:

My old site is hosted by SBI! which is proprietary. I have cancelled with them and will be moving my domain name to a new registrar (my other domains live at NameCheap). I already have a new domain/WordPress install set up and have no problem with the hard work of reposting content. I have no desire to use the old domain name for the site (it was hit hard by Google algo changes even though I have tried to be 100% white hat in everything I do).

I know I need to set up redirects to point to the pages on the new domain. Can I use the redirect tool in my cPanel in HostGator? Or do I have to go into the .htaccess file (which I don't know how to do)? This feels like a HUGE job to me, between getting the content moved and setting up the redirects to hopefully save the little goodness I still have from the old domain.

If anyone could point me to a step-by-step tutorial or give advice, I'd be very grateful.

Kim

[wade_watson]

There are a lot of tutes around on transferring sites. I'm not familiar with SBI, so you'll need to do a little research on exporting data from it. Exporting text data from any WordPress or Blogger site, for instance is simple, since you just need to locate the site backup, save an xml file, then restore it into the new site. If SBI doesn't back up to the xml format, you'll probably need to reassemble the site from your own text files or from the text on the HTML pages.

Graphics are a bit more of hassle and will all have to be saved and restored separately, which can be quite time consuming for a large site. Certainly if you have hundreds of entries, it will take hours to rebuild all your entries in WordPress. But, then again, once you've done that you'll be very experienced at operating a WP site, for sure, and things should be easy sailing after that.

[Wendy-Retirement]

Kim...

someone wrote a tutorial on moving from SBI to WP.. let me find it and will get back to you!

Wendy, another SBIer!

[Lynn Terry]

If your original domain was penalized, I would simply build up on the new domain and get new links and do fresh marketing and go from there. Ideally you would have explored the penalty and looked into options to recover it, but now that the site is down you might as well just start fresh.

Did you outsource link building, or do you have any idea why the original site was penalized? It would be good to know so you don't repeat the offense on your new domain. ;-) See: http://www.clicknewz.com/6052/google-penalty-recovery/

[bocaratonsh]

Kim...

someone wrote a tutorial on moving from SBI to WP.. let me find it and will get back to you!

Wendy, another SBIer!

Hi Wendy, sorry to bump this up but if you found the URL, would you be kind enough to post it please?