The Web is an industry that thrives on the new... but what about building sites that last? In 1996, I used my newly acquired HTML skills to build a fan site for my favourite author. Twenty years later, the site - roalddahlfans.com - is still alive and kicking. I'll trace the development of the site over the years, which mirrors both my own career journey as a developer and the trajectory of the web as a whole. I'll also talk about the challenges I faced during my recent 6-month project to convert the whole site - nearly 1500 pages - to WordPress, dragging it into the 21st century at last.

1. My Website Can Vote
The Challenges of Maintaining a 20-year-old Website

3. 20 frickin’ years

4. December 1996

5. December 1996

6. 6 months

7. 2 years

8. 3 years

9. 3 years

10. 3 years

11. 3 years

12. 4 years

13. 4.5 years

14. Meanwhile…

16. 5 years

17. 5 years

18. 5 years

19. Fast forward 14 years…

20. 19 years

21. So what to do?

24. Pros
• Security - better than what I had
• PHP-based
• Responsive themes
• Plugins!
• Better admin UX - including ACL & versioning
• Less friction to update

25. Cons
• Security - WordPress is a big target
• Learning curve
• Migration effort
• Ego - would using WordPress make me look like
a n00b?

26. Concerns
• How to organise the site? How much of the
cross-referencing to automate?
“This has to be a solved problem, right?”
• 20 years of inbound links and PageRank to
preserve
• Hard-coded HTML styles in the DB to clean up

27. The Plan
• Set up site on new host
• Create basic site structure
• Read up on security
• VaultPress & Wordfence
• Auto-updates
• Set up child theme and create nav menu
• Start migrating content

28. Migration
• Start with simplest pages and sections first
• Write functions where needed
• Required some plugins:
• Advanced Custom Fields
• Add Categories to Pages
• WP Gallery Custom Links…

37. More Plugins
• Breadcrumbs -> Breadcrumb NavXT plugin
• Calendar -> My Calendar plugin
• Trivia Quizzes -> Riddle (+ plugin)
• Polls -> WP-Polls plugin
• Search -> Relevanssi plugin
• Timeline -> ???

38. Final Steps
• Migrate all old news/blog posts
• Set up Adsense and Analytics
• Update the theme
• Set up .htaccess redirects
• Change DNS to point to the new site!

40. Some numbers…
• ~4500 page views/day
• 28% US; 25% UK; 6% AU
• 60% desktop;
27% mobile; 13% tablet
• 84% via search;
11% direct; 4% referral;
< 1% social
• Most popular content: short stories; trivia quizzes; teacher
materials

41. What’s Next
• Set up SSL
• Mop up broken links
• Add new content
• Update design once illustrations
are finished
• Keep an eye on stats & revenue

43. Thanks!
@web_goddess
Kris Howard
@RoaldDahlFans
http://www.roalddahlfans.com