How to correctly migrate urls from custom asp.net solution to Wordpress?

Question

I have a web site built using asp.net with ugly URLs like /DisplayContent.aspx?id=789564.

I know how to migrate the database, but the Wordpress urls will be (naturally) different.

Can I simply write some mapping or do I have to include a rewrite rule for each subpage (300 pages) in .htaccess?

Should I provide a rewrite rule for each existing page that would transform a full old url to the known new url, like for example:

/DisplayContent.aspx?id=789798 -> /2010-5-10/Title-Of-The-Post

Even if I manage to migrate the URLs, the structure of the HTML for the new content will naturally be different. How does this affect SEO?

Should I run asp.net and wordpress side by side and issue the redirects from the asp.net application?

What is the most efficient solution to this kind of migration of URLs without doing PHP programming?

Answer 1

This sounds like fun. I'd imagine that you are going to have to do a massive find and replace in the your DB dump that matches your new (clean) WordPress urls. Then I would scrape a list of those aspx urls and do a list of 301 redirects in your .htaccess or httpd.conf. That way you've taken care of any links with in pages/post and any inbound links from other sites and bookmarks.

Another way to check your work once you've migrated your URLs is to tag the site for Google Webmasters Tools and fix any 404 errors it reports. Or if you can scrape all the of the URLs on the site and simulate a request recording the HTTP status code it returns that way you know if your redirects are working or returning a 404 error.

Answer 2

This WP plugin Redirection - Manage 301 redirections without modifying Apache | Urban Giraffe has a CSV import function, so you can import a list of your URL changes and stay out of a long .htaccess file. It logs redirects, 404's, etc.

You will take some sort of SEO hit, but Google will reindex quickly if you verify your site with WTools and then turn up the crawl rate.

I'd take the plunge and run WP under php rather than a side-by-side install. You might even try a WP demo install with that plugin and throw some test .asp URL's at it.