We were looking to deploy a new Frontity site onto the same domain that Wordpress is currently running on, without moving Wordpress to a subdomain. Is something like this currently possible using Frontity?
I see that the recommended deployment method is to use now.sh along with Wordpress on a subdomain, and while this works for us, the client is worried about SEO being affected.
The idea is to have them both be accessible from the same domain, and avoid pointing the main domain to the now.sh servers as the current deployment instructions recommend.
Welcome to Frontity and thanks for sharing your case with us.
Unfortunately at this moment we only support the “Direct to Frontity” installation which requires to move the WordPress installation to a subdomain. We are working on the design of an alternative installation that we call the “Theme Bridge”, this won’t require moving the WordPress to a subdomain, but we don’t have dates for the release of this feature.
In any case, I invite you to share with us your SEO concerns, our SEO expert @christianoliveira will be happy to help you. This is the last thread where he was solving SEO doubts: What Wordpress Theme to activate?
Let me know about any specific doubts about Frontity and SEO.
As general advice, regarding SEO:
You should not have two different domains/subdomains working on parallel, open to public and to Google, at the same time, as Google can discover the new domain/subdomain (the one where you would install Frontity) and index all the content from the Wordpress both on the original and the new domain/subdomain which can lead to SEO problems.
You should develop and test your new Frontity site on a test domain/subdomain, which should be password protected. Even though Frontity does a very good job creating a very fast site using your existing Wordpress content, there may be functionalities you have on your Wordpress blog that Frontity doesn’t have, that may have an impact in SEO and that you may develop on your own before migrating your existing site. Before migrating the site, you should test it thoroughly. Also, if you want to keep the current & feel of your site you should create your theme and replicate that look&feel in Frontity.
Once you get everything ready and decide that you want to move on onto production, you should keep the same domain you already have to avoid forcing Google to update all the URLs on their index and follow 301 redirects. So if your current WP site is on www.mydomain.com, you should copy the WP to a subdomain (for example, as @luisherranz proposed, wp.mydomain.com) and use www.mydomain.com as your Frontity domain. The WP site (wp.mydomain.com) should be redirecting all the “public” URLs to the Frontity domain, as explained here: What Wordpress Theme to activate?
