hi - i posted this question in migrating but perhaps wrong section so have added below - please can anyone help?
thanks
neil
I wonder if anyone can help. We have a site in joomla which is now moving to silverstripe.

The issue is that we seem unable to replicate the urls in the new silverstripe site as nesting and flat urls don't achieve the goal.

The tricky part is that we want to replicate the current urls as they get very good seo status - whilst i know that 301s can be used the consensus seems to be that they have some affect on seo and we just cant risk that.

An example would be this page on current site - http://www.flyingkiwi.com/new-zealand-south-island-tour/. On new site it will still have 1 "parent" navigation items and if we use nested urls or flat urls it still inherists the parent item. Also on some pages on the current site we have 2 parent items but the url doesnt inherit either of these - again this doesnt seem possible in silverstripe.

also the current site uses a mixture of .html and / at the end of urls - can silverstripe replicate this as at present we only have / at the end?

if someone can help would be highly appreciated? Is there no kind of url override plug in as you get in joomla or wordpress?
thanks
neil

Hi Neil-

For your flat-level pages like the link you mentioned, you could set up a Redirector Page type at the root level (new-zealand-south-island-tour) that would forward to your new, nested page. If you're set against using a 301 redirect then you'd want to leave a regular page at the root level and manipulate your menus instead.

As for the .html pages, try editing your .htaccess to redirect to your new pages.

-John

301 redirects are always your best bet in terms of SEO please see http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection as well as googles own best practice suggestions http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

Can you're site take an SEO hit from 301 redirect? Sure. But its only temporaory until the google bot sees the redirect and assigns the old weight the new URL. I've done this many times and I've even seen sites increas in rank becauseo the cleaner url structure.

are there any seo penalties with a Redirector Page type at the root level as this would help with a number of scenerios (also is that any different to having a 301 from the old url to the new page - better or worse)???

also, if i have tourx but it has 2 parent items in the nav (for example big tours and cheap tours) is there anyway of the url displaying as xxx.com/bigtours/tourx rather than xxx.com/bigtours/cheaptours/tourx??? this doesnt appear to be an option as neither totally nested or flat? does sliverstripe not just have a url rewrite plug in?

thanks guys
neil