This is a question I get on a regular base: How can I convert my Static HTML website into a WordPress website?

Let me give you a warning in advance, a WordPress website needs to be kept updated!
A static HTML site can run for years without you ever touching it for things like security updates. Just to make you aware of the need for updates!

Another thing that needs really close attention is to make sure that your rankings in Google and other search engines stay intact.
That means you need to make sure your URLs of your old site will stay the same with your new WordPress based website.

Luckily this can be done and for those few links you want to change you can redirect them via your .htaccess file.

But first things first, the conversion of your website.

First, what do you need:

• good hosting that support php
• a mysql database: databasename, username for that database and the password for that useraccount
• the possibility to use a .htaccess file

If you are not sure about the above mentioned items, ask your website hosting provider!

Installing WordPress in a Subfolder

The first thing you will do is to install WordPress into a Subfolder like /cms .

After you finished the installation you have to set the Privacy setting so that Search Engines are not allowed to visit and index your site (Settings -> Privacy) so your new URLs are not getting into the index until you are ready with your conversion.

Now you can strat building your WordPress website next to your current site, that site will say active while you build a new one.

Keeping Old URLs

Like a mentioned before, it is very important that you keep the URLs for the new site the same as the old one!

That is why you need to set the Permalinks to custom with the value /%postname%.html this will result in Posts links with the extension .html.

During the development of your new site the urls will be like /cms/pagina-url.html zijn, but after the final steps this will become /pagina-url.html , that same as the old site.
Make sure that the “slugs” are the same as the old site, and there is a plugin you will need is “.html on pages” . I take it you will have some pages that use the extension .html

You can now start to convert your old pages to WordPress by copying the text or the HTML code of the content from the old website into the HTML code screen of WordPress.

Your page URL is created by the Title of your page, but you can change them by editing the Slug permalink.

There is a plugin that could help you convert old pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/import-html-pages/ Attention! For this plugin to work you really need  PHP5! Ask your hosting provider if you are not sure.

Website Layout

The conversion from your old site to a WordPress based site with the same layout is completely different exercise than what I am describing here, to do that your will have to get a complete custom Theme / Layout. But why not take this opportunity and change the look of your site together with the conversion? Choose a nice premium or free theme  that will fit you company / website topic and customize it to your needs.

If you are happy with the look and feel and the content of your site you can follow these step to get it “live”:

1. delete or rename the index.html file in the root of your old site.
2. copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the /cms folder to the root of your site
3. change one rule in the index.php file into require(‘./cms/wp-blog-header.php’); (only with the index.php file in the root, not in the folder  /cms!!)
4. change only the Site address (URL) in the general setting (Setting -> General) into the domain name. (remove the /cms part)

Change Site Address Only!

5. remove or rename the old  .html files.
6. change the privacy settings so the Search Engines can access and index the site again.

If you handle the change over it this manner, than your old site is not reachable during the 5 minutes you need to change the index.html to the index.php and if you kept your URLs you are not loosing any visitors from the search engines like Google.

And of course you had taken a Back-Up of your old static website so you can restore you old side if you should encounter an unexpected error.

If you want new URLs for your pages than you can redirect the old URLs to the news ones in two ways:

• use a plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
• via the .htaccess file in which you have to write a rule per url you want to forward:  redirect 301 /olde-url.html http://www.example.com/new-url.html

Good luck and if you still have some questions, please use the contact form.

If you have other tips and additions that might help others, please write them in the comments section below.

One last question: Is there a need to have this information in an even more detailed form like a pdf manual with screen shots and tips? if so, please leave a comment.

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

Once you have completed the basic setup of your WordPress website, it’s time to add more functions by instaling plugins.

Here is a basic list of plugins that I integrate into every WordPress website I build.

Basic WordPress Plugins List

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
FD Feedburner Plugin
Flexi Pages Widget
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
My Page Order
NextGEN Gallery
Related Posts
Robots Meta
Secure Files
SEO Slugs
Subscribe To Comments
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress File Monitor
WP-DBManager
WP-SpamFree
Fancybox
WP Security Scan
W3 Total Cache

Yes, you counted correctly, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin, you know how difficult a task it was to install these.

Search for the plugin on wordpress.org, click the install button, confirm that the installation was successful and activate the plugin.

Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!

Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac, and it is a great time-saver.

This is always the first plugin I install using the standard process:

Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate Process

Once you have done this, the magic begins. Go to the option “Plugin Central” under the Plugins menu.

The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field were you can paste the list shown above.
Of course, you can just type the names of other plugins you want to install.

Once you are satisfied with your list, click the “Install Plugins” button.

Depending on your host’s security settings, it might ask you for your FTP data such as FTP site, username and password. Or,  it will start to work directly.

The process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes under two minutes for all 20 plugins.

After the whole process has ran, you need to active all of the plugins, which takes about four clicks.

Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin), choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.

Now all of your plugins are active. Some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right off the bat.

Configuring the plugins will take some time, but you just saved a lot of time on the installation, so go ahead and set all the options that you want. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but now it’s time for you to take action!

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

You want your new WordPress website to be easily found by search engines, right?

One thing that you need to think long and hard about is the title of your website. This title will show up on every search engine’s search results page, which shows the link to the homepage of your website.

The title should not only contain the keywords you want to target, but it should also invite searchers to click on that title.

The WordPress Title

Most themes will show the title as the title of your post or page, with or without the title of the site (which is set under Settings —> General).

For myself and the majority of my customer’s sites, I use a plugin called Headspace2 which gives you the ability to write different HTML titles. These are the titles that are shown in the title bar of your browser, and are also the titles used by search engines.

With Headspace, you can set different titles for your homepage along with several other pages (archive/category pages, etc.). It shows a separate field under your writing panel where you can put the title.

On this page, you see the title “Use the Right Title in Building a WordPress Website.” But if you look at the top of your browser, you see the title “The Importance of Using the Right Title when Building a WordPress Website.”

The WordPress Theme Header

There is a little catch for Headspace2 to work the right way…. you need to check the way your theme uses the Title function in your header file.

To check this, go to Appearance —> Editor,  select the file called Header (header.php) and look for this coding:

<title><?php if (function_exists(‘seo_title_tag’)) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(”); bloginfo(‘name’);} ?></title>

In the example above you can use a plugin called “SEO Title Tag” that will do the same as Headspace2, with the exception of a few limitations. You can also see that the name of the site is appended at the end of the title. You need to change that code for optimal use of Headspace2 and replace it with:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?></title>

For branding purposes you could add something extra into the code, such as:

<title><?php wp_title (”); ?> | WpSiteBuilding.com</title>

The only problem with this is that the title will get too long for the search engine listings. Search engines will cut the title at this moment to about 60 positions.

Did you install the plugin and change the title function in the header of your theme? If so, it’s time to read up on how you can write those great visitor-attracting titles over at Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

P.S. The code “wp_title” is taken from your database table. If you have another table prefix, you have to change the prefix to match your installation (WordPress Installation).

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

This website is now on a full new WordPress 2.7 platform and all plugins are updated to the latest release.

I am now really happy with my new laptop an HP Mobile Workstation  which runs on Windows XP. I is really fast on for my kind of work a real workhorse!
But the main reason why I am so happy is this: It runs Adobe Flash 9 ! instead of 10.

On my old laptop I upgraded to Flash 10 ans since then all WordPress 2.7 based Blogs and Sites I wanted to administer ran horrible, and that was not because of some plugin that was at fault.
Also my Blogs on WordPress.com gave me the same administrative problems resulting in not being able to post or even update a post, aarrgh :-(

Where possible I downgraded my 2.7 based sites to 2.6
Which is easy, just follow the same process as upgrading to a new version, but instead of uploading the 2.7 files you upload the 2.6 version and login, upgrade and your done.

I even tried to downgrade to Adobe Flash 10, but no luck there. As soon as I went to a website with Flash the plugin update to 10 again…

On the new laptop I can hold off the Flash Upgrade so I can work with WordPress 2.7 which I must say look great from an administration view.
Coming form 2.6 you still need to get used to the new placements, but it is not that hard to getting used to.

So in short: Don’t upgrade to 2.7 yet if you have Flash 10 installed (Check your Flash version here) if you have version 9, then go ahead but make sure not to upgrade to Flash 10 until this issue is fixed.
For your information, this is NOT a WordPress problem, but a Adobe Flash security problem!

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.