Questions about converting to a REW template

[David Abernathy]

I have made major changes with several of my domains in the past and had mixed results on my placements with the search engines. Thought that others thinking about making the move to a REW site may share some of my questions. I have decided along with 2 of my colleagues to get REW template sites. One is going to convert from a Number 1 Expert site, the other 2 of us are still deciding about converting from an existing site to REW or starting a new site. I am leaning towards the conversion route.

From what I have seen most of your template sites are .php extension sites. A couple exceptions like the new site for JudyO have .htm pages. On my Ocean30.com site I have around 270 .htm pages in Google's cache. What do you recommend in this type situation?

My second assumption, from what I have seen is that the sites are designed and then content added prior to the sites being brought online. With January thru April being our busy season, aside from learning curve and time requirements, are there other conversion type issues we should consider?

With many of the sites that I have exchanged links with having software that tracks links to confirm they are not removed (easy to understand the value here), what is the best approach to deal with link partners - do I just need to contact each of them?

Photos at the top of the pages; I really like the designs that your team has created...Is it an option for community specific pages to have their own series of photos? For example - photos of Jupiter on Jupiter related pages and photos of Singer Island on Singer Island pages?

Last question - for now - I think your new Destin listings page is awesome. Is that an option?

Looking forward to finally starting what I have wanted to do for months. Thanks for providing the great resource that this forum and the SEO-Guy forum are.

Dave

[judyo]

Since I was transferring an existing site I wanted to make sure all pages remained exactly the same (plus for duplicate content issues). Since I transferred my listings to REW's listing template I dropped my original listing pages. My only negative about that is that my pages had an area/location in the html url instead of the current php numbered pages. I'm not sure how this affects things, though.

Even though this was an existing site it is still new so I can't really compare how this affected my serps. I was already #1 in MSN for many different kw's and I am creeping up in Yahoo (on page 3 for my main kw's).

[webmaster]

David, as far as naming conventions go your pages do not need to be .php as we have built in mod_rewrite we can rewrite all the URL's to .htm .html etc if you want to conserve your filenames (Are they worth keeping, do the pages rank well?)

Naming your files is a snap - you just go to the filename field and type in what you want the exact name to be (Without the extension) for instance with the default .php extension in effect I would go in a type in jupiter-real-estate and the filename would become /jupiter-real-estate.php

For your link pages, you could keep those filenames as well, and then just place your existing partners (Those still linking back) on the new pages and there should be no need to contact them.

To move your content its a simple copy paste, however we use external CSS for much cleaner code so I suggest taking your content with copy paste, and then pasting it into notepad first (This will remove the formatting) then just paste it into dw to organize it, or paste straight into the body of the content management system and format there via html or wysiwyg

Photos - If you are talking about the slideshow, that is something the REW team must do, yes you could have it work that way, but it would be subject to billable hours (It takes our team 1-3 hours to do a slideshow) this being said, in the body of your site you can paste as many images as you like. Just click "insert images greab the image you want and paste it in the body of your site Example http://www.thesarasotamls.com/siesta...eal-estate.php

As for the destin listings, yes its available but the Destin site is a custom IDX solution integrated into a full custom website - Something like that is a much pricier solution as their is a LOT of programming hours and design time involved. If you wanted something with at least that functionality and uniqueness the prictag would be in the 6-10 thousand dollar range, as opposed to the $750 you pay for a template. Certainly a worthwhile investment if you have the investment capitol (And its a tax writeoff) but it all depends on what you really need, and how much you can spend.

Oh and your welcome