Uploading a new Actinic site alongside an existing non-ecommerce site

[Sean Williams]

We have a longstanding site, which is non-ecommerce and now want to convert it to Actinic.
Understandably, I'm scared of upsetting the search engine resluts we get which are currently excellent, so my feeling is to upload the Actinic site (ie; with the root /acatalog/) alongside the existing site (with the root /) and pass visitors over to the relevant section of the new site using javascript links.
Does anyone have any opinions and/or advice on this method, or suggestions of a better method?

The site is www.calamander.co.uk, which you will see is stuck in the dark ages!

TIA

[mattc]

im no expert on this, but I believe you can do something called a 301 redirect with a htaccess file. This is known as a permanent redirect and might a bit more proper. I assume its also server side, so you don't have to worry about non JS browsers.

Worth a google.

[RuralWeb]

you may want to look at v9 as you can remove the acatalog and replace it with your own text.

[fergusw]

Your site is hosted on an Apache Linux server so 301 redirects are what you should use.
Basically, a 301 redirect allows you to tell the search engines that "the page that used to be here -> http://www.calamander.co.uk/accessories/bikeaccs.htm has been moved/renamed and can now be found here -> http://www.calamander.co.uk/acatalog/bikeaccs.html"

Any associated indexing within the Search Engines should update and their indexes should update to reflect the change.

A quick google on 301 redirects should give you all you need to know about making these statements in a .htaccess file

[mattc]

helpful stuff. thanks for clarifying fergus

[Sean Williams]

Thanks Fergus.
I have heard of 301, but obviously it completely left my mind when I actually needed it! I'll use that as it's clearly the way to go.

I have been tinkering with V9, Mal, but so far it re-writes my layouts and I'm short of time at the moment, so I'm waiting for the first maintenance release and then I'll tackle it.

Useful info, both - thanks