Yesterday was interesting to say the least. We spent the day giving one of our brokerage websites a facelift.
The original website was done in 2006 and had become dated. We had several goals for the facelift. We wanted to convert from static html pages to WordPress, wanted a clean Web 2.0 look, and wanted to retain most of the functionality of the original site as it had served us well.
This was also going to be a "dress rehearsal" for a facelift for our main website early next year.
The day started with moving the original site to a temporary domain. Once the original site was moved, the old domain was cleared, and a fresh copy of WordPress was installed. The first plugin installed was Maintenance that shows a page on the site telling visitors that the site was being worked on and giving them a link to the temporary domain. While web visitors see the maintenance page, admins see the live site. This allows you to work on it while trying to save some of your traffic.
We went with the Architect theme from iThemes. Having no experience with the theme cost us some time learning how to work with it. I had to do very little coding outside of tweaking a little of the PHP in the footer.
By the end of the day the installation was complete. The last steps were deleting the old site from the temporary domain and building 301 redirects in the .htaccess file to preserve the URLs that had already been indexed.
Total cost was about $70--$57 for the template and about $13 on images. I spent most of the day working on it but had I had a plan in-place and time blocked I could have completed it in about 4 hours.
What to see it in action? Visit us at www.referralagentsoftexas.com.
Tom Branch and Gina Branch, The Branch Team with RE/MAX Dallas Suburbs, service the greater North Dallas suburbs including Dallas, Plano, Allen, McKinney, Frisco, Lewisville, and Carrollton. While Gina concentrates on traditional listings and buyer/tenant representation, Tom specializes in assisting distressed homeowners to avoid foreclosure. Tom and Gina have published two books (Achieving Rock Star Status and The Field Guide to Short Sales) and are available for speaking engagements in the greater Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex. Subscribe to The Branch Team Blog.
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Tom, wow, you seem to know a lot about the website codes and how to do this. I'm impressed, I wouldn't know how to do all of that.
Tom this is all great information, albeit (I hate to admit) way over my head.
Greetings from Innerloop Houston
Linda Jamail Marshall
713-523-4600 info@LindaMarshallRealtors.com
So...... that would make you a WordPress GURU now..... wouldn't it!!!?? Congrats on all the hard work.
The WordPress Guru is Jeremy Blanton!
Tom
Have the same situation with a very successful site that lacks some newer media that is not just tacked on and requires a whole new site on a Joomla platform. Before overhauling it, got three Joomla books, built what I liked, did not like in a slew of other sites and brand new sister site. Like NASCAR tag team with different look but capture of the market audience the goal. So much more media, buyer tools to gain the information quickly, efficiently that being a "home delivery" agent and harnessing the media streams is our service job these days.
Hello Tom:
Thanks for passing this along. I have been putting off updating my web site, and it shows. I tried a store bought version earlier in the year and was disappointed. I need to get this done.
Brian,
I'm deep into planning the conversion of my main site. I can't afford to lose the SEO...
Tom