[Madeline Gabriel]

After our strategy call, I have a follow up question that’s maybe more general and I hope okay to put here. My old website/blog is horribly out of date and now a bit broken after I messed around with its no-longer-supported theme last night. I have a number of relatively popular posts from years past that have a largish number of active links to them so I want to keep those posts available until I restructure the content on the new site (different url). BUT, ideally the new site is not “unveiled” with all this disorganized content for new people to have to sort through.

What I want to do short term is 1) have a clean new homepage or landing page with the new logo, branding, business name, etc where I can announce the forthcoming new course(s)/programs, layout my marketing message and start a waiting/interest list. I have that in-progress with Thrive Suite and 2) still allow viewing of individual blog posts by link/search but not lay out the whole jumble. Instead, if someone follows a link to a particular post, they can only read that post and get an announcement of new things coming, get on the list for advance notice, etc.

My question: I have my old blog posts uploaded to the new site. If I set up straight redirects from the old site and simply don’t put them on the menu in the new site, does that do what I want in terms of keeping them “hidden” except for how they come up in Google search or via link? That is, new visitors to the site will see only what I set up on the home/landing page, right? And then behind the scenes I can keep hurrying to repurpose/update the important content and then “release” it the way I’d like new people to see it (and adjust menus accordingly)?

I feel like this helps me get my new website up faster to at least announce what’s coming. Am I missing some pitfalls here? What do other people do when they are rebranding but have existing (relatively) popular content?

[David Risley]

Yes, you can have a landing page as your homepage and simply not include navigation to the rest of your site. And just have the blog posts sitting back there for links from search or whatever.

Now, in terms of your new site, I would recommend you create a staging site copy of your site and do the work in there. Then, you can work on the new site without worrying about hiding anything. When you go live with the new version, it is as simple as clicking a few buttons.

If I’m making simple changes, I usually do it right on the live site. But, for anything more substantial, I always do it on a staging site first so people don’t have to watch my site do weird girations. 🙂

[Madeline Gabriel]

Thank you, David. I do have the new site all in staging right now and will do that again for each next version as I go step-by-step adding different pieces. And, of course, I should have done that for my old site before I messed around and broke it. Maybe I subconsciously needed to give myself a reason to move quicker on my new site…

As I’m working on the copy for my new homepage/landing page to focus first on selling my foundation course, I’m left with wondering whether I even want to keep all those old blog posts because I am going to be repurposing all of that content.

I don’t know why it feels so hard to “break up” with my very outdated model of somewhat random blog posts and focus on a sales-oriented website. I’m trying to get re-focused though!

Short term, I can go with my initial plan to redirect straight across to the same blog posts on the new site and add info about new course, etc. but not have any menu navigation from home/landing page. So that’s what, home page with info about me/course/etc and opt-in for lead magnet, right? That will start building my list and give me something to “announce” to my existing contacts. This feels within my skillset, with some help to make sure it all lays out the way I want.

Next:

• complete my course materials
• set up email/contact management software
• outline email nurturing plan for students and contacts
• launch the course at least at beta

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Then:

• assess initial/beta course results
• revisit website structure to optimize SEO and valuable/accessible content
• decide what to do with incoming links to old blog posts
• make an overall more informed plan for where to go from here and set a budget

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I like to think I can get to this milestone by the end of the summer if I stop expanding all the other things I “could” do but realistically do not have time for right now. Am I missing a key piece for just baseline goals?

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