Converting from BANS to phpBay, Method 2
Last week, I started a short series of posts about Converting a BANS site to phpbay. The first method was easy… cut your losses and start over! This post will walk through the considerations you MUST take into account when converting a busier site with a steady flow of traffic, that you do not want to disrupt and hurt your earnings during the process!
Disclaimer: When I convert my own sites, I do what works for me. If you find one of the steps below does not work for you, I encourage you to try different methods, until you find what works best for you.
Important Things to Plan For
OK – so you have a site that is somewhat busy with traffic and the last thing you want to do is disrupt the flow, and drop your earnings! BEFORE you start hacking away at the site, you MUST take into consideration that traffic and what will happen to it!
- Which Pages are Delivering Traffic?
Whether they come from search engines or links you have built, you need to have a list of the pages that are delivering the majority of your traffic! I do this by going back to the last FULL month of stats in cPanel (cPanel is not perfect, but it does the job) and scrolling down to the “Pages – URL” section, which shows you a list of the most popular pages. - Narrowing the List of Pages
Now that you can see which pages are popular, you have to decide which you are going to build 301′s for IMMEDIATELY, and which ones you will simply handle as they generate a 404. For myself, I use a rule of 30 pageviews. If a page is not hit at least once a day, I will just leave it as-is and rebuild it when the need arises (ie: a 404 is found in the site log). The rest that generate at least one pageview per day, will have a new page created, before the transition to the new site!
…
As you can see in the image above, I am not going to worry about the home page, or the admin, or sitemap page at this point. You will have a new homepage, the admin is not publicly available, and the Sitemap will be handled with a new sitemap, at the same URL.
NOW that I have a list of pages that are delivering DAILY traffic or hits, I have to plan for a new page on the new site, that they will be redirected to! You noticed I stopped at the 30 hit point… because MANY pages are below this level, and you could literally spend weeks doing nothing but creating the 301′s for the pages that truly aren’t your bread and butter!
PAY ATTENTION TO THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGES FIRST, THOSE WITH YOUR MONEY TRAFFIC!
Building the New Site in the Background!
If you are like most, your BANS store is on the root of your domain, meaning it comes up and displays directly at your main URL, www.yourwebsite.com. Since the most important factor during this conversion is our visitors and NOT disrupting them, we need to develop the new site in a new directory, and simply move it when we are done! I know this sounds daunting… but it is very simple, even for someone who has never done it!
The way WordPress works… the location of the install is maintained as a variable. So at any time, you can easily move it around, and variable just rebuilds itself. AS LONG as none of your pages are indexed, you will have no issues with the rebuild.
- Install WordPress to a Directory
Inside your HostGator account, login to your cPanel, go to Fantastico, and install a WordPress Blog to a /blog/ directory (This can be named anything, it is defined in step 2 of the install in fantastico). DO NOT link your new blog ANYWHERE on your public site! We are using this for development ONLY, and once it is completed and ready for public, we are simply going to replace our BANS site with the new phpBay or phpOStock site we are creating! - Remove ANY Ping Services During Development
Login to your new blog admin and go to the Settings > Writing > option page, and clear the “Update Services” box at the bottom. We DO NOT want to notify ANYONE of our new site, until it is on the root and ready for viewing. - Install your WordPress Plugins
Just like you would with any WordPress build, install your plugins and activate them. The only exception tot his is that you DO NOT ACTIVATE the Google Sitemaps, or Redirect plugin Yet! Here is a list of 8 plugins I use on almost every site… however, the Automatic Upgrade is no longer needed!
Now that your install is completed and you are sure nobody can find about it until YOU are ready – Build your New Site!
Pages, Posts, or What?
I can tell you that on my own sites – I am starting to use WordPress more for PAGES than posts on affiliate sites. The pages are created to have a static look and feel to them, and are much easier to control as far as visibility, than posts are. I use a hierarchical menu system just like I did with BANS sites… creating a logical and common sense menu system for visitors.
Posts on the other hand are used to provide bits of news or basic information, about the pages of content. Using a simple plugin like the YARPP (Yet another related posts plugin) the pages will display the related posts in the blog. The Gas Furnace page at the webhvac site is a good example of how that works. Its a page, with only 4 listings, and 5 related posts (Older posts mind you) The plugin is very adjustable to get the exact posts you want showing beneath others.
- Make sure you build a now page or post for all you +30 pages!
- Make sure you have a good way to handle 404′s! Almost all WP themes have a 404 page, make sure it works!
Moving WordPress to the Root to Replace BANS
This is likely the part that will scare off most people – it is SUPER EASY, as long as you do it right! I just want to reiterate… you DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS! You can simply leave the blog in a directory and run your new site from there with a simple 301 on the main home page. The only disadvantage, is that wordpress will no longer handle your 301′s with the plugin, and all will need to be created manually.
Warning: Once you click on save, you will no longer be able to access your new blog from the same address! If something goes drastically wrong (Which it wont) you CAN still edit the database through cpanel… to correct things.
- Login and Change Blog Location
From the main menu, choose Settings > General > and there are two boxes you need to change: WordPress address, and Blog Address. If you installed WordPress to a /blog/ folder, they will look like: http://mywebsite.com/blog. You need to remove the portion for the blogand click on save. When the page refreshes, it will show a 404 error. - Remove BANS and Replace it with Your Blog
Login to your cPanel account and go to your file manager. Rename the public_html folder to something like “bans_backup” and move the /blog/ directory we created, to the root of the domain, renaming it public_html, and making the blog the new content engine on your site. Here are the offical wordpress directions for this. Keep in mind that since NONE of your new blog files have been seen by the public, you will not have to worry about changing much!
**Note: In step 2 above, I referred to the public_html folder as the root of your website. This assumes it is the ONLY domain on your hostgator account. If you are converting an add-on domain, the folder will be named according to how you named it during the original setup, which is usually some portion or all of the domain name. Bottom line.. its the ROOT folder for the domain.
Setting the New Location Options
Now that your site is being powered by WordPress – you want to get back into your admin and set a few of the things we neglected during the initial setup!
- Go to the Settings > General > tab, and make sure the new address is correct. EVEN IF you make no changes, click on save! This will overwrite your htaccess and make sure it works properly.
- Go to Settings > Permalinks > and make sure your permalink structure is correct. I use the date format the majority of the time… Month and name.
- Go to Settings > Writing > and reset your RPC ping addresses. On some sites, I have had a whole list of RPC servers in here… I have found that keeping the general setting of: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ works just fine, as the WordPress plugin does the rest for you.
- Activate your Google XML Sitemaps and Redirect plugins.
- Make sure the 404 logging option is turned on in the redirect plugin (It IS by default, so you will not likely need to change anything)
- Using the Redirect Plugin, add a 301 for all the pages you decided to redirect in the section above. Redirect them as: old page url > new page url.
- Check that your 404 page works, by typing some abstract url into your browser.
Summary and Going Forward
I know the method above seems like alot to do… but the only thing that is going to take time is the creation of your 301′s in the redirect plugin. I can rip out about 45-60 per hour, as long as I have the list in front of me.
From this point forward… you can simply visit your 404 log in the redirect plugin on a daily basis, and if you see 404′s being generated for pages you already created, it is a point & click away from being taken care of! If you find 404′s for pages you did not yet create, you can choose to either create a new page/post for them, or simply 301 them to one of your existing pages.
Mark
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Changing from BANS to PhpBay – Method 1
- Converting WordPress Templates to work with BANS
- Converting WordPress Theme to BANS Template – FAQ
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Hi Mark,
Great step-by-step post for all of us who have found we have BANS only sites we need to turn into money making sites.
You’re correct. A lot of the stuff on your list takes longer to describe than to do.
Jeff
Mark,
Great article! Thanks for sharing. Another plug-in I use during a process like this is the Maintenance Mode plug-in for wordpress.
It helps to have it active right when you go live with your wordpress site after converting from bans… just to make sure you didnt forget a step and have everything in order before revealing your new website to the general public.
Thanks again!
Joe
Thanks for the post Mark!
This answered quite a few of my questions.
Since buying phpBay a couple weeks ago- I have fully developed one un-used domain I’ve had laying around just to practice using the new format. Now I am getting to the point where I want to use your techniques here to actually re-do my “money site”.
This post will get printed out for sure!
Thanks again my friend.
Thanks for another very informative post – how do you find the time!?
@ Mark – a question about one of your recommended plugins:
If you use WP-Cache isn’t there a danger of serving cached pages showing expired auctions?
Thanks and keep up the good work!
James
I am having a problem with step 1 in Fantastico. What should be in the box for: install on doman? It forces you to choose.
Mark,
Do you think this is a viable alternative BANS/WP integration?
@ Joe –
Thanks for the tip on the plugin!
@ James –
You know, I never really thought too much about the cache plugin showing expired auctions. There are settings in the plugin you can change to exclude certain things or pages from being cached however, I need to look into it more!! Thanks for the remind on that!
@ Dr Bob –
In step 1, you just choose the domain you are working on. For addon domains, it will list them as:
addon.main.com or addon.com (Obviously, the term addon, refers to an addon domain)
I always choose the primary: addon.com, versus using the absolute file reference, addon.main.com.
As far as this being a viable solution to BANS/WP sites, it is the way I roll now! The webhvac site actually STILL has the BANS site on the backend, with an older BANS/WP theme on it, but its only left in place to capture the old links that were built. As I add new redirects each week, I remove the pages and will ultimately remove bans 100% from it.
Additionally, there is no public way to get to the bans pages anymore, except in a few errant posts that had links to it.
Its been so long since any of the developers at BANS have been heard from, Im afraid that version 3, may have been the last update. (Kelvin, you still reading?)
Mark
It was confusing to me because when I did it that way it goes into the public_html and I thougt that was a no-no.
@ Bob –
The image below shows a quick reference to which I would use. Then in the file manager, the getaracecar site root folder would be the getaracecar portion of the following:
public_html/getaracecar/
public_html, is the root of the primary domain setup with the original hostiung account.
/getaracecar/ is the root directory of the addon website.
Mark
This is exactly why you are one of the best bloggers out there – you’re tutorials are second to none! I’ve been waiting for this exact post for a while… going to be transferring some BANs sites over shortly!
Mark,
I have a question about **Note: In step 2 above, I referred to the public_html folder as the root of your website. This assumes it is the ONLY domain on your hostgator account. If you are converting an add-on domain, the folder will be named according to how you named it during the original setup, which is usually some portion or all of the domain name. Bottom line.. its the ROOT folder for the domain.
I understand how to handle the add-on domains. I also have a blog on the primary domain but I have other add-on domains that do not have blogs. If a remane the primary won’t I mess up the add-ons without blogs? How do I handle it?
Thanks in advance.
Mark,
Disregard the previous post. I got it. But I do still have a question about :
**Note: In step 2 above, I referred to the public_html folder as the root of your website. This assumes it is the ONLY domain on your hostgator account. If you are converting an add-on domain, the folder will be named according to how you named it during the original setup, which is usually some portion or all of the domain name. Bottom line.. its the ROOT folder for the domain.
I changed http://www.mydomain.com to mydomain_old and changed blog to http://www.mydomain.com and the mydomain.com page looks nothing like the blog.
2. How do you get to wp-admin to add posts, pages, etc.
I’m weary of doing any significant coding changes to my blog…switching to a new domain was scary enough..
Mark,
I think I have the concept of this and I am in the process of a rebuild of a year old bans site to make it a blog. I have followed the instructions and have got a template and started the blogs that I will need to redirect the store pages to. I have also stopped the sitemap and the ping service.
** My question is do I need to date the blog pages for a earlier date? and actually make them live and scatter the dates over a month or two??? I have several posts in the drafts and want to know what I should do… Thanks as always
This is such a great article, Mark – I just finished re-doing my acting website (http://marillawex.com) and it worked like a dream. It was scary moving the blog, but everything worked, just like you said it would. Thanks AGAIN!
Hi Mark,
I followed your instructions as far as renaming the new blog to public_html and the old public_hml (that contains a bans setup and a wp blog) which I renamed to bans_backup but at that point I died !
I realise from the codex that I have to rename something to somesitebut I am just getting a 500 error and cannot log in to the new site.
what is it that I should be renaming please ?
Thanks for your help
Keith
@Keith Jones – Looking at your code, it looks like you have to get into the blog admin and put in the location of your site. Right now, its wanting to load based on /blog2/
Mark
Hello Mark,
I’m still stuck on this I’m afraid – while your instructions were great – the WP codex ones were confusing.
I still get internal server error 500 error codes.
I renamed the blog to /blog and then renamed it to public.html but I’m still stuck !
Keith
@Keith Jones – Hey Keith… Its hard for me to really help on it, since there are many variables, and without being in both cpanel, htaccess and the blog admin, its just a guessing game on my part.
What I can see however, is that in the header of your site, you have references to both /blog/ and /blog2/.
Where is the site loaded on the server?
Check your htaccess file for old references, etc. Thats where most 500 errors in WordPress resolve to.
Mark
Mark,
I keep coming back to these posts. I have held off changing two of my sites because they have done pretty well on BANS. Now with the new EPN changes and BANS’ future so uncertain, I want to change to PHPBAY PRO and wordpress for the root sites. The sites have been growing for 2 and a half years with regular posts to their folder blogs. It’s going to be a pretty big deal to get everything changed, but your help in the method 2 post helps tremendously.
Basically, I will keep the folder blog as is and install a new WordPress to take the place of the BANS on the root. (following your directions) I am also going to use Dan’s suggestion from the first comment in the Method 1 post:
“I found that if I paid attention to the category and page name urls, I don’t seem to have a problem with 404 errors. The WP urls match up nicely with how I setup the old BANS site. i.e. each old BANS category = new WordPress page with PHPBay.”
Do you think that it works better to build basic description-review/store pages as WP pages or WP posts?
The blog and the root wordpress will have the same theme for continuity. Have you ever made a post about how to share a sidebar for two installations of WP (root and folder)? or do you have any quick suggestions for doing that?
As always…thanks so much for helping so much.
Julie
@Julie @ Abeka Homeschool – I think it would be a mistake to have 2 installs of WordPress on a site you are representing as one.
If you currently have BANS on the root, like:
mysite.com/
and the WordPress install at:
mysite.com/blog/
You will be better off just crating a static page for the root, or using a 301 redirect to move everyone to the /blog/ folder, and using it as the home page.
WordPress installed 2x may be do-able, but I see no benefit in it, and since both are after the .com (versus in a subdirectory) it may even present future or current issues.
Pages versus posts really depends on the site of the site.
I tend to use PAGES for product-type-pages (Like BANS pages, with nothing but product listings) but use posts for buying guides, etc, that have a lot of text, video etc.
I also no-follow/no-index ALL of those product pages, and ONLY lead traffic into them with the posts.
Mark
Thanks for your suggestions, Mark. The main reason that I wanted WP on the root (where BANS is right now) is so that I can use the same BANS page urls when I build the wp pages…so that they just take the place of the BANS pages when I make the move.
Will it work as well to install WP at the root and build pages to take the place of the BANS store pages, using the same url structure.(with no follow)
Redirect all popular mainsite.com/blog urls to new posts on the mainsite.com
Leave mainsite.com/blog wordpress installation up with redirection to mainsite.com pages for a few weeks to allow search engines to index new pages and drop old from index.
Then, as soon possible, delete the mainsite.com/blog
If this will work ok as well, do you have any advice.
Also, do you know if the Robots plugin for wp is a good way to set up no follow for multiple pages?
Thanks, Mark.
@Julie @ Abeka Homeschool – You can still do the same thing (redirects) with your htaccess Julie.
Instead of installing an entire application just to have the common URL’s… htaccess can handle it just as well.
You dont HAVE to have your site on the root of your domain and MANY sites are in subfolders like that.
Of course, if the entire structure is jacked up (blog and pages) it may be worth just starting over, and doing your 301′s as you go along, putting EVERYTHING in the domain root.
How many monthly visitors are we talking about disrupting? (I mean specific to your / root level BANS pages) 500 or 50,000?
Mark
Hi Mark
I am about to take the plunge and move a site. Typically I have done it back to front and the products pages are posts and the others are pages but at least the main home page is a static page. before I do it I just wondered how the redirect plugin actually works, do I need to make a copy of all of the old urls that are on the bans site first?
cherie
@Cherie – I try to base the use of the redirect on popularity. By looking at your stats, you should be able to tell which pages are popular, and which of those popular pages are earning nickel.
I tend to base use of the redirect on whether or not a page was busy and earning money. IF a page is earning money (ANY money), then I use a redirect. If not, why bother? Just create a new page.
If a page is busy with traffic (+hundreds of monthly pageviews by SEARCH or direct referral visitors) it needs a redirect and a new page for it. If not, why bother?
Your stats package and 404 reporting is your best friend during this time. IF a page is getting a LOT of 404′s, evaluate it for earnings and redirect it if you feel its worthy.
M
Hey M – it worked, that’s fantastic thanks to your great tutorial.
If I want to redirect another bans site to the same site as the one I’ve just changed to wp how would i go about that? Do I just redirect the pages that have decent traffic on them and redirect the home page as well then kill the bans install or what? Not sure how to progress on that.
@Cherie – If the site is busy, you might want to 301 the exact pages in the OLD site htaccess, to the NEW site pages.
Again, I base it purely on traffic earnings. But in this case, I would also look at pagerank authority. If the site has authority, you may want to preserve it on a per-page basis.
Is the old BANS site very active and earning well?
M
Oh, (sorry turning into a catalogue of questions) I see in my fantastico that the newly transferred wp site isn’t there, just the old one that was in a test folder, is it ok to delete that test folder? It says only manual upgrade possible, installation unknown. Is that because I did it manually by moving from 1 folder to another? And is it now save to delete the backup folder of the bans installation along with all the bans stuff on that site?
@Mark Hansen – In a word, no but it is the same topic as the other one, just a different country and in that country the generic keyword happens to be different as well. So maybe I should just redirect the main sitename?
@Cherie – I would simply base it off time versus earnings then Cherie.
IF it earns enough for you to justify spending a few hours creating all the redirects one at a time, then it may be worth the rewards.
Otherwise.. htaccess 301 on the root of the old site, and drop in a single html index.html file, that says “We Moved”, with a link to the new site. ALL should be redirected, but in case something makes it past (I HAVE seen it happen often) the htaccess, it will just be a closed / moved landing page.
@Mark Hansen – Thanks very much Mark, I’ll leave it there until the deadline – there aren’t many 302′s on it anyway. Much appreciated
Cherie
@Cherie – NP Cherie. :-)
Mark, I don’t know how to do the htaccess 301. I have made a copy of the bans part and done a 301 redirect via cpanel from the root of UK site to a US site (both had different names as in the UK the item isn’t called the same thing)
How do I do the index.html saying we moved and still redirect the whole thing?
I have 1 site left that I have sort of converted over to phpbay but it was a wp/bans site (done with your instuctions). The bans bit was under a directory called “shop” and although I have deleted that folder I cannot get it to redirect to a page on the new site. I asked HG and this is what they have said
“This is failing because of the word press Rewrite rules for your wordpress blog, Since shop does not exist as a file or a directory it fails. When I attempt to create a file or directory named shop it still does not work,”
do you know what I have to do to get it to work?
thanks
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Converting from BANS to phpBay, Method 2