Posted by Fox on August 24, 2007 at 11:52 AM

In this, the second part of 'Turning your existing Website into a Blog', I look at the key technical considerations.

FILE NAMES & PATHS
When moving any existing web site, you need to consider the impact that it will have on your search engine listings. TypePad only uses the .html and .htm file extension for it's pages. If your existing site also uses these, the move to TypePad is almost painless.

Even if you're using other page extensions such .asp or .php, but you only ever link to folder paths and NOT the actual pages, then for you it is also painless.

For example. On smstoday.co.uk all of my pages used the .asp page extension such as smstoday.co.uk/free-sms-text/index.asp but I only ever linked to the folder smstoday.co.uk/free-sms-text/

This meant that the move would have no negative impact on my search engine placements as long as I replicated the folder structure correctly.

If your existing site does link to internal pages with any page extension other than html or htm, then you need to consider the impact this will have on your search engine listings before moving to TypePad.

DOMAIN NAMES AND TYPEPAD
If you're planning on using a new domain or even a new sub-domain of your existing site, you really have no need for this guide, just get over to TypePad and get started.

For those of you wanting to use your top level domain TypePad offers a Domain Mapping feature so you can use your existing domain seamlessly with your TypePad Blog.

You'll need to be sure that your current domain host allows some custom control over the DNS records that describe your domain and have the ability to create and modify A, MX, and CNAME records. Worth noting that my domain host DOES NOT support any of it, but achieved the same result by changing the "www record" for me.

When you create your account with TypePad, you'll choose a unique account name. For smstoday.co.uk my account name is "smstext". TypePad creates your blog url using the account name. i.e. http://smstext.typepad.com

My domain name host has set up http://www.smstoday.co.uk so that it's mapped to http://smstext.typepad.com

IMPORTANT - It's very important to note that the domain mapping can take up to 24 hours to take effect. You will need to have all of your existing folders, pages and images in place on your TypePad account BEFORE requesting that the domain mapping take place.

NO FTP ACCESS
You'll need to get used to the fact that YOU ARE NOT GIVEN FTP ACCESS to your TypePad account. All of your files are uploaded using your browser. This can take a little getting used to at first, but I never gave it a thought after a week or so.

SERVER SIDE INCLUDES, BUT DIFFERENT
TypePad does allow use the use of server side includes, but NOT in the traditional sense that you simply upload the file you want included in various pages of your site/blog. They use ".inc" file extension.

Instead of uploading a .inc file that your have created locally, you create a .inc file in your account and paste the html in to it using your browser, then "save" and "publish". Once saved and published, you can call the .inc file in to any of your site/blog pages

That's it for now, to be continued...