Joomla as layer over existing website?

Can Joomla convert existing website?

[honestman]

Hello,

This may be a dumb question, but I was told that Joomlacan potentially act as a layer over an existing website. I may have been misinformed or misunderstood. I want to use a more automated CMS.

I have an existing .html site using SSI which is more than showing its age (long story). I want to know if I would need to change file extensions to use Joomla and thereby lose backlinks in the short-term. I know 301 redirects in the long-term handle conversions, but 301 redirects can be very time consuming on a huge site and have their SEO risks, I have read and witnessed.

Any advice would be appreciated before a consultant gets ahold of me and takes me for a ride (I was once a consultant, so nothing against consultants, but good ones are very expensive and hard to find)...

Thank you in advance

[lucy24]

I want to know if I would need to change file extensions

You never need to change extensions. (This is a generic answer, not specific to joomla.) At worst, you'll have to add a line in htaccess that rewrites --not redirects-- from your old extension to the form the CMS uses.

If your old filenaming system is icky, you might take this opportunity to change it. But that's a whole nother question.

[honestman]

Thank you. I just did not know if the Joomla platform allowed for files which have server-side includes. I suppose I could change all the internal SSI in my HTML forms into Joomla modules once I understand how it works.

I just wanted to avoid having to do 301 redirects all at once. Of course, a file structure redesign can be refined on an ever-growing site, but even that can now be penalized if the file structure is seen as involving too much "keyword stuffing" as I understand it. It is so hard to know what triggers penalties that it makes one not wish to change what currently works... which is the opposite of what I think is intended.

Thank you again. I will be cramming on Joomla unless others see objections to using it for migration.

[ergophobe]

>>if I would need to change file extensions

As Lucy said - no. If someone tells you that you do, find a new consultant.

>> if the Joomla platform allowed for files which have server-side includes.

I would have to say no. I mean, maybe you could, but I don't really see how. Joomla is going to want to build the whole page.

But keep in mind, whether you use SSIs and whether you have to have a certain URL extension are completely different questions. I can put any extension I want on my URLs and have them run with just about any technology out there.

[honestman]

Thank you ergophobe for decoupling my question.

When you say that Joomla is going to want to build the whole page, that is of some concern, as I want to link my pages to the twitter bootstrap toolkit to convert to a minimalist version HTML5 and don't want Joomla to take over everything. I was thinking it could be used as an abstraction over the back-end connection to a MySql database, for example, etc. But best way is to play with it, obviously. It seems hard to find information on how to connect these tools. Thank you.

[ergophobe]

>>link my pages to the twitter bootstrap toolkit

That's a themeing issue. You have to build (or find) a theme based on Boostrap. I am doing one right now for Drupal based on the HTML5 Boilerplate + Bootstrap distro. There are some off-the-shelf ones too.

A content management system should separate concerns - i.e. it shouldn't lock you into a presentation layer.

If you want to use Bootstrap (no longer called "Twitter Boostrap" - it's been separated from Twitter) with Joomla, just search on "joomla bootstrap theme" and you should find all sorts of stuff.

... including Joomla Magazine with an article on how to build a Bootstrap responsive theme from scratch... but it's best to poke around yourself.