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Nikki
Nikki

Reputation: 279

Updating an existing website

I've been asked by a family friend to completely overhaul the website for their business. I've designed my own website, so I know some of the basics of web design and development.

To work on their website from my own home, I know I'll need to FTP into their server, and therefore I'll need their FTP credentials, as well as their CMS credentials. I'm meeting with them in a couple of days and I don't want to look like a moron! Is there anything else I need to ask them for during our first meeting (aside from what they want in their new site, etc.) before I start digging into it?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 184

Answers (3)

Hemal S.
Hemal S.

Reputation: 16

If you are going to design the website from scratch then also keep this point in mind.. Your friend might have hosted this website at somewhere (i.e. hosting provider). You should get its hosting control panel details as well which will help to manage the website (including database, email, FTP, etc.).

Upvotes: 0

defau1t
defau1t

Reputation: 10619

If the website is static, knowing html, css and javascript along with FTP credentials is enough for you to get started. However if the site is dynamic interactive and database driven, you may need to ask if they want to use a php, In that case you might end up building this site in wordpress.

Upvotes: 0

Igal Zeifman
Igal Zeifman

Reputation: 1146

From an SEO point of view, you should be concerned with 301 redirects as (i suppose) some or all URL adressess will change (take a different name, be removed and etc)

So, after you`ve created a new version of the site - and before you put it online - you should go ahead and list all "old site" URLs and decide, preferably for each one, it's new status (unchanged or redirected and if so - to what URL).

Mind that even is the some content will not re-appear on the new site, you still have to redirect the URL (say to HomePage) to keep link juice and SERP rankings.

Also, for a larger sites, (especially dynamic sites) try looking for URL patterns for bulk redirects. For example, if you see that google indexes 1,000 index.php?search=[some-key-word] pages, you don`t need to redirect each one individually as these are probably just search result pages that can be grouped with REGEX to be redirected to main search result page.

To index "old site" URLs you should:

a. site:domainname.com in Google (then set the SERP to 100 results and scaped manually of with Xpath)

b. Xenu or other site crawler (some like screamingfrog) to get a list of all URLs.

c. combine the lists in excel and remove all duplicates.

If you need help with 301 redirects you can start with this link: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php/

Upvotes: 0

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