PensandBeetles Posted January 20, 2017 Share Posted January 20, 2017 I have a small business site hosted on TCH since 2003 www.pensandbeetles.com. The site is woefully outdated and I would like to begin building our new site in Wordpress but I keep running into problems. We built the first site in 2003 in Dreamweaver but that is not my area of concentration and I'd rather not re-learn that application. Having very limited experience and understanding of directory structure, etc..., am I asking for trouble in trying to build a new site using the same domain while keeping the old site up and running for email purposes? Is it possible/do-able to migrate our email accounts (old saved emails, inbox, etc) into the new wordpress site? Currently using Horde webmail. I'm following a Lynda.com tutorial and have setup a MySQL database but got a little confused when setting up the wordpress directories via FTP, since our site is already parked there. ANY advice or resources that might help are greatly (enormously) appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PensandBeetles Posted January 20, 2017 Author Share Posted January 20, 2017 I misspoke in the above post. We're using Roundcube webmail. Probably doesn't matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Dick Posted January 20, 2017 Share Posted January 20, 2017 If you do not mind your current content being offline while you make changes, then you can do the following. Create a new folder in public_html, either via FTP or cPanel FIle Manager, then move all your current site files into it. Then in your cPanel locate Softaculous and use it to install WordPress, this would have you up and running in no time. None of these changes would affect your email accounts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted January 21, 2017 Share Posted January 21, 2017 Welcome to the forum, PensandBeetles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bala Posted January 21, 2017 Share Posted January 21, 2017 Welcome to the forum, PensandBeetles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muymalestado Posted January 21, 2017 Share Posted January 21, 2017 (edited) If you do not mind your current content being offline while you make changes, then you can do the following. Create a new folder in public_html, either via FTP or cPanel FIle Manager, then move all your current site files into it. Then in your cPanel locate Softaculous and use it to install WordPress, this would have you up and running in no time. None of these changes would affect your email accounts. Thank you Dick for your explanation to pensandbeetles as I also look toward doing the same. One step (a big, multi-step) I don't see you suggest is after using Softaculous or similar to create a new WP site the copying of the relevant pages from the old site into the newly installed WP. Would that be "nearly" as simple as that sounds? Or is there another technique to get the old pages into the new site? edit = typo Edited January 21, 2017 by muymalestado Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bala Posted January 22, 2017 Share Posted January 22, 2017 There are no direct methoods of copying your existing html pages to wordpress as wordpress is php - mysql based. Your best approach would be to recreate the pages manually once wordpress is installed. That said, there are plugins like HTML Import 2 which you may look into. Make sure you have backups of your data before starting to work on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PensandBeetles Posted January 23, 2017 Author Share Posted January 23, 2017 Wow, thanks for the welcome and the informative answers. My new site will be just that (entirely new pages). So, if I'm understanding correctly, I won't need to worry about transferring existing html pages. I'm not familiar with Softaculous at all. I'm assuming it is installing the needed wordpress site files directly onto the server and not my desktop machine. I'll have to look into that. Thanks again for the help. I'll let you all know how it goes though it might be a little while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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