By glenndrupal on

I have an existing E-Commerce site on a Linux host server that is comprised of .HTML files containing JavaScript, HTML5 code, etc.

Is it possible to install Drupal 7 on the same domain along with the Drupal Commerce module and "redo" my site pages in Drupal 7. I also found a mobile responsive theme that looks like my existing site which I will use.

Then when I'm done recreating my existing site in Drupal, modify the .htaccess file and do a 301 redirecting from the pages of my existing old site to the new Drupal site so that I don't loose any SEO rankings in big 'G'.

My concern is installing Drupal on my exist site with all of my existing pages. Is that going to "mess" up my existing site pages, or is there a better way to do this?

Also, the theme I want to use for my Drupal site is the Professional theme at http://professional-theme.techsaran.com/ because it has 2 sidebar columns which my existing HTML based site has. Is it OK to use this theme in an E-Commerce type website?

Thanks, Glenn

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

ShalomPisteuo’s picture

ShalomPisteuo commented

Hi glenndrupal,

I'd recommend that you rebuild your existing site in a development environment. Maybe on your local machine. Then once it is completed and tested moving it to your production web server.

If you have a lot of products on your ecommerce site then this will likely result in a need for an excessively large number of 301 redirects. Personally, I'd use Google Webmaster tools to identify the pages on my site which had the most "backlinks". Then, only setup redirects for the pages that have incoming links from external sites. Google is really good at learning new site architecture. So your rankings drop will only be temporary as Google crawls your new site URLs. The 301 redirects are beneficial so that you keep the link juice and positive user experience so that your referral sources aren't sending traffic to 404 pages.

Installing drupal on top of your existing site will likely create a lot of problems.

The theme you choose for your ecommerce site is really up to you as all of them can be customized to fit your needs.

I hope this helps!