Creating a New Site

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Creating a New Site

Are multiple websites okay?

aleyzonme2k1

4:41 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

I am currently working on a new site that has a bunch of new features and products. I would like to plug it in to replace the existing site. But im hesitant because these next couple of months are the busiest time for my business. So I though about registering the new site with another domain name and submiting it to search engines but the new site is going to have the same company name and some of the content is the same. Most of it has changed and there are a lot more pages with the new site. Is this something i can get penalized for? If i have 2 sites that are the same company but different urls and different site structure.

pleeker

5:26 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

If this is your busy time, or if that's coming soon, then I think you're doing it correctly by making it a whole new site and not replacing your existing site.

With a certain search engine, there are just too many issues right now for new sites (sandboxing, etc.) that you would do well to keep your existing site in place until the new site gets established.

BTW, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

aleyzonme2k1

6:34 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

Thank you! I've been reading threads from webmaster world for a while now just havent posted. Anybody else have an opinion on this subject?

john_pinx

7:35 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

pleeker is right - keep your old site. It works and you need it just now, so stick with it. Try to not have the new site a *direct* transcript of the old one. Make some cosmetic changes and try arranging the sequence of paragraphs differently - if you know what I mean. That'll be enough for your new site to be just that - a new website. Submit it and wait for your rating, when it takes over from your old site - put a 301 on the old domain to your new one, and that's you - job done :-) Don't expect this to be quick - it'll take quite a while for the rating of your new site to overtake the old one. make sure you have good links *to* the newsite, and lots of them from other relevant sites doing something similar. That is probably the hardest thing to do, but produces the best results.

Hope this helps :-

JohnP

chrisnrae

8:38 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

Get past your busy season first, then work on changing over the site. I wouldn't buy a new domain. By the time it clears, you're busy season would probably be over. Why risk anything. Wait until the after holiday slump (if your site has one) and then change it all around. Least that is what I would do.

aleyzonme2k1

12:19 am on Aug 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

It looks like we are going to change the template and add new pages as well as more content to our existing pages, while keeping the same url's. Would that be okay?

Our homepage has the most traffic and we will be adding more content and more keywords to it. Are there any possibilities of our rankings going down from just that?

john_pinx

6:36 am on Aug 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Yes - *any* change puts your rankings at risk :-(

Build the new site and put it on a sub-domain with full A record. You can submit it and tinker with it and it'll only cost you the time spent, and won't put your existing site at risk. From what you write it appears to be a fairly major re-build of the site, so there should be no conflict between the two in terms of what the search engines see. When the new site has better ratings than the old one, just put it on the main domain with a 301 re-direct on the sub-domain and you'll be safe.

There's lots of ways to do this job, but it's important to not disturb the original site while you mess around and build the new one. It also depends on what access you have to the server - for doing stuff like sub-domains, redirects, etc.

Hope this helps.......

aleyzonme2k1

2:56 pm on Aug 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Could you explain this sub-domain to me a little more. I spoke to our host and they said they could do it. Is it something where I need to setup another ip address and just create a subdomain [aaa.mysite.com...] and direct it to the new ip?

john_pinx

3:21 pm on Aug 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

If your existing domain is mydomain.com and it is currently hosted with a service using something like Apache, then the sub-domain could be newsite.mydomain.com and either you or your host will have to edit the httpd.conf file to make it point at the folder where the new website is. Nothing to do with IP's - no changes needed there.

Don't forget to add www.newsite.mydomain.com as well - both should have their own A records in the zonefile to make the two websites separate in SE's eyes.

So your zonefile will read something like -
mydomain.com. IN A 123.321.321.123
www.mydomain.com. IN A 123.321.321.123
newsite.mydomain.com. IN A 123.321.321.123
www.newsite.mydomain.com. IN A 123.321.321.123

I suggest that you make all your e-mail from the newsite go to a series of addresses with something that will allow you to see where they've come from. Addresses could be newsite_info@mydomain.com , newsite_admin@mydomain.com , etc. You'll be able to create rules in you local mail client to sort these from the usual@mydomain addresses. Once the newsite is in a position to take over, it's a simple matter to change the e-mail addresses - not forgetting to keep the old ones for those peole who send one e-mail a year (I wish!).

Hope this helps you along......
Slainte,
JohnP.