Hi
Currently have my website using the Epicure template on Joomla 2.5. I need to change the look and feel of the website as it is more ecommerce based now and like the new Ignite template.

What I need to know is if I change the template to Ignite that the page URLS that I currently have that google sees won't change by just changing the template itself. I don't want to lose what Google has as it currently works well (needs more work though), but people are finding my site.

The second thing is I would like to update to Joomla 3 sooner rather than later whilst there is a bit of time up my sleeve. Assuming I have the Ignite template set up under Joomla 2.5, is it going to be a difficult thing converting to Joomla 3? Will this affect the site in the way that Google sees it?

Thanks

If you change the template and leave everything else intact, your links won't change

On the other hand, migration from J2.5 to J3 will produce differences because of the way routing is implemented in J2.5 and J3. You could try to solve those differences using some 3rd party SEF extensions like sh404sef or similar

I'd agree with Mihha here. There is bound to be some change in the upgrade to Joomla 3.x, but it's stable enough to work with now, and the benefits of a bit of hard work and planning should actually improve things for you in the longer term.

Richard

Hi

- as Mihha suggested you could use extensions or the Joomla core redirect functionality

I'd check to see if components in the site are available in J3 and I'd migrate the site locally rather than use the live host

Cheers
Paul

Yes, of course. I would do an Akeeba backup of the website, download it to my local environment and do the migration locally