Hello,

 

I've just installed K2 in my J1.5 website, created new menus, etc.

Now: Google is still pointing to the old URLs of the old Joomla articles.

Because the menus have changed, users get an empty page...

 

What's the best way to handle this??

Trash old joomla articles?

What if I want to import K2 items back to joomla articles?

With some SEF extension and manually redirect all old links. But it is some job if you have many items and links.

I wouldn´t bother about it. In Google Webdeveloper leave a sitemap and just wait. It takes some time.

Hi.

 

Unless you do a 301 redirect from your old indexed Joomla pages to the new K2 items, Google will still keep that link indexed (even if the sitemap you submit has updated links).  If you also want to keep your Google juice (ie: your positioning in the ranks) for these pages, you better do a 301.  It does take time but it's the curse of changing links in a Google world... 

 

If you were using SEF before and your page links followed a specific naming convention then you might be able to do whole directory redirects instead of just individual file redirects. It'll be faster.  

In general, once you hare completely satisfied with your Joomla to K2 article transition and you have had time to put your site through extensive testing, I'd suggest you delete all the old Joomla articles & categories especially to avoid old indexed links not going away.  I initially did not do that and kept finding old Joomla pages in the Google indexes...

 

Re:  "What if I want to import K2 items back to joomla articles?" - There's no automatic way except for some extensions that import/export articles as csv but the big question is why would you want to?  Move to K2, keep your old content, test the hell out of the K2 site, once you're satisfied, more forward and never look back :-)

 

--Olivier

Hi Olivier,

 

Thanks for your help.

I did install K2 without looking back, I trusted its developers (I still do).

 

However, my traffic has deteriorated a lot (about 50%) as I am using SEF. I know it will rebound with time, but still is disappointing to see most of the traffic going to empty pages..

 

Is there a simple way to do that "301"? Some tutorials or something?

 

Thanks!

Nuno,

 

If you are loosing this much traffic, you have to do 301s!  

Are you using the Joomla SEF or a 3rd party?  If you use sh404 then go into the alias manager, find the current K2 page and add an alias of your old joomla page there (other 3rd party SEF components should have the equivalent functionality)

If you are just using the Joomla SEF then you either need to create 301 in the .htaccess file or use a extension like one of these: extensions.joomla.org/search?q=search...301+redirect&q=301+redirect&sa.x=0&sa.y=0

 

You can also use Admin Tools (highly recommended) to create 301s from the backend.

 

If you want to do it manually (be careful, .htaccess files are easy to mess up and completely screw up your site), then take a look at these pages:

www.301-redirect.info/en/advantages-of-301-redirect.html

www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

 

--Olivier

 


Nuno Nogueira said:

Hi Olivier,

 

Thanks for your help.

I did install K2 without looking back, I trusted its developers (I still do).

 

However, my traffic has deteriorated a lot (about 50%) as I am using SEF. I know it will rebound with time, but still is disappointing to see most of the traffic going to empty pages..

 

Is there a simple way to do that "301"? Some tutorials or something?

 

Thanks!

I'm using Joomla SEF.

 

I'm trying to avoid 3rd party extensions to avoid trouble. I know .htaccess is complicated, so I don't even dare to touch it.

Are those Admin tool also part of k2?

 

Thanks for your help!

www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843&hl=en

@BBC 

I don't think that getting the site reviewed by the Google team will do anything for Nuno's problem.  The old links are still active and not forwarding via 301, that is not Google's indexing issue.  

Invoking the Google team is only useful if you buy an old domain name that was Google slapped or if you discover some dramatic issues with the way Google indexes your site.  Can you imagine if everyone who changed URLs had to invoke a live team to "fix" their problems?!

 

@Nuno,  if you don't want to use 3P tools AND 301s are too complicated for you then you need to hire someone to do the work for you.  Ignoring the problem will not fix these blank pages :-) Sure, in a couple of months, you might be lucky and Google might have dropped those pages from its index but If you are already complaining about the drop of traffic, you need to do something :-)

Admin tools is a 3rd party extension by www.akeebabackup.com that created 301 files for you, it's not part of K2.

Good luck!

--Olivier


BBC said:

www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843...

Thanks,

I'm sure all K2 users have this problem... if no-one thought of a solution for this before, I would go crazy.

It´s not K2. It´s website structure and planing for many years in future.

2 months ago i archived ca 20 Joomla articles. And my unique visitors drop for 2/3.

It sucks.....big time. Positive side is that i don´t earn money via that website.

It's amazig K2 developers have not predicted this in advance..

At least, it should be clear that if you install K2 in your Joomla website, your traffic will disappear from one day to the other! Currently, my website traffic dropped from 4K uv per day to 1,2K...

What if I just trash the whole Joomla content and submit a site map to google? How long will take to rebound?

 

Thanks Olivier Karfis, I'll check that tool!

Nuno,

 

I could also say to you "It's amazing that someone in charge of a 4K uv a day site would make such a dramatic infrastructure change without testing it locally and planning a proper upgrade path".  

K2 is a complete replacement of the content component of Joomla and as such, no-one should expect that the transition will be seamless.  There are definitely some things that Joomlaworks could do to ease the transition but blaming them for this is not called for (try any other CCK out there, you'll run into the same things).

 

As far as how long it takes Google to remove old pages from its index, there is no guaranteed timeframe.  Could be couple of days for some URLs, could be months for others.  Even if this happens rapidly, you will most likely loose page ranking and that can take a really long time to regain (not to mention that it's not just Google that's affected but every site and person that had a link to your old pages too).

 

If you don't want to learn about 301s running a 4k uv/day site then don't blame anyone else on loosing traffic. 

 

--Olivier Nuno Nogueira said:

It's amazig K2 developers have not predicted this in advance..

At least, it should be clear that if you install K2 in your Joomla website, your traffic will disappear from one day to the other! Currently, my website traffic dropped from 4K uv per day to 1,2K...

What if I just trash the whole Joomla content and submit a site map to google? How long will take to rebound?

 

Thanks Olivier Karfis, I'll check that tool!

I could also say to you "It's amazing that someone in charge of a 4K uv a day site would make such a dramatic infrastructure change without testing it locally and planning a proper upgrade path". 
You're right. I've built my site from zero to 4K uvs a day without any knowledge of Joomla, Google or Html whatsoever. I admit I am naif...

The point now is I have a problem to solve, I'm looking for a developer to help me with this task.

I've also tested admin tools, but 301s must be created manually so it won't solve my problem..

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Nuno,

Admin Tools just does one to one 301s but .htaccess can also be built with very complex RegEx searches to do global redirections (see httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html ).  

The first thing you have to do is compare your old sitemap with your new one and identify the pattern differences in the URLs.  Hopefully, the page names are the same and only the directory path has changed (otherwise, you probably want to first make the change so that the page names are the same as the old joomla page names before moving on the the redirection phase - it's an almost impossible task otherwise).

 

I'd help you but I'm not a RegEx expert by any means.  I'd suggest you try someone on elance.com, if you give them clear directions, they can probably knock it out in a day or so for relatively little money.

 

Good luck,

 

--Olivier


Nuno Nogueira said:

I could also say to you "It's amazing that someone in charge of a 4K uv a day site would make such a dramatic infrastructure change without testing it locally and planning a proper upgrade path". 
You're right. I've built my site from zero to 4K uvs a day without any knowledge of Joomla, Google or Html whatsoever. I admit I am naif...

The point now is I have a problem to solve, I'm looking for a developer to help me with this task.

I've also tested admin tools, but 301s must be created manually so it won't solve my problem..

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Hi,

 

I've made a reply to same problem here :

community.getk2.org/forum/topics/suggestions-for-moving-from-j?commentId=3536014:Comment:163201

 

I've created a system plugin to redirect joomla content url to K2 item url. I'm still working on content section/category redirection.

 

Nuno, if you've kept the same structure, this should work for you. Contact me to make some tests if you want.

 

Olivier

Hello,

 

I've kept the same structure: imported k2 items, replaced menus to point to k2 categories.

 

If your plugin works with this, I'd like to test it.

 

 

Olivier Nolbert said:

Hi,

 

I've made a reply to same problem here :

community.getk2.org/forum/topics/suggestions-for-moving-from...

 

I've created a system plugin to redirect joomla content url to K2 item url. I'm still working on content section/category redirection.

 

Nuno, if you've kept the same structure, this should work for you. Contact me to make some tests if you want.

 

Olivier

Hi,

 

In attachment, the Beta version of the system plugin that, for now, ONLY works with content details url, i mean :

index.php?option=com_content&view=article...

 

I'm working on section & category views.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Olivier

Hi Olivier,

Installed your plugin.

 

Here's an example: this:

www.portal-gestao.com/financas/1482-fazer-o-orcamento-familiar.html

 

should point to this:

www.portal-gestao.com/financas/item/1482-1-fazer-o-or%C3%A7amento-familiar.html

You're still working on it, right?

Hey Olivier,

 

I'm testing your plugin, from what I can see so far, it works beautifully!

I'm sure this will benefit a lot of k2 users.

Excellent work, congratulations!

 

:-D

@Nuno thanks for the feedback...

 

In attachment the v1.0.1 of the plugin that has been completely rebuilt to only filter bad content item urls from old menus to new K2 items urls.

 

it redirects with a 301 code, so search engines are advised it's a permanent redirection.

 

If you need explanations on how it works or if it doesn't work for you, let me know.

 

Olivier