Restructuring A Website: Is It Worth The Time?

When did PayPlans Restructured?

The complete restructured site of PayPlans was launched two months earlier on 21st June 2013. The beautiful day came after a complete team effort that took fine shape after months of smart work. It included moving the data from old site, managing the url redirects etc.

The strategy for Restructuring.

Obviously restructuring a complete site is not a task of single afternoon. It will always requires a pre planned strategy before diving into. Before we could start restructuring, we had few options to start with:

**We could start developing a fresh site from scratch:**Earlier we were considering this option, but Payplans is not a single page site. It has many subscriptions, documents, App listings, support forums etc. So, we discarded it.**We could start by modifying the current site:**It was more feasible and expert's choice in our case to go with. In this scenario, we decided to simply redesign the existing template with new technologies (to name a few:- latest Joomla 3.X series and Bootstrap). After that, we will be needing to migrate the existing data and subscriptions carefully to the new place.

New changes we considered and their effects?**Updated to the Latest Joomla version:**Yes, this is the most important outcome of our site restructuring.

Let me confide in you that we had been using Joomla 1.5 till date:-P. Isn't it a very shocking fact, but seriously we had it long time in our minds. And it is mainly due to current version of Joomla 3.1.5 that we are able to step into the responsive side of PayPlans.

But, apart from responsiveness the latest version of Joomla CMS also allows you more security than its ancestors. You can download as well as know the security features on the Joomla Notification blog.**Bootstrap for jpayplans.com:**With the update to Joomla 3.1.5 we were knocking on the doors of responsive designing. As you may look below the direct statistics from our Google Analytics page, will show an increasing trend of mobile users.

Mobile users

So, if you are also business oriented and want to grab fast attention then I would recommend trying a mobile version of your site. "Go Responsive!".

"Build sites for Human use first, then for the Search Engines."**User Interface Improvement:**All the time, we designed our new site keeping prime focus on the above mentioned quote. Infact a lot of custom development took place, to maintain an even UI.

Earlier the site was running many pre built commercially available components for joomla. But as our understanding for Joomla development and the team count grew, a need was felt to overthrow the compromise being done till date.

So, we developed our custom Joomla! extensions for:

• JoomlaXi forms for our on site form management
• Blogging
• Documentation
• Change Logs
• Download manager
• Partner's page
• FAQ
• AppVille
• No need to mention the static pages too

All these changes were made only with a single concept - Remove all that is not needed. So, if you have resources, then go free with a crisp new site. Doing so, leaves behind the coils which hold back your site's SEO as well as performance.

As promised above, I would fill the blank as:***"Website restructuring is worth for achieving latest techniques in web development and improvement in user experiences."***You can fill as per your choice too. What say?We are also starting a series in which we will elaborate in detail about the above mentioned customizations during restructuring of jpayplans.

You may have a look below and see the statistics we gained after restructuring our site.

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Pingdom Statistics

Expert's Thoughts on Restructuring a Site:

Restructure websites for improved access, intuitive navigation and up-to-date user experience! Properly restructured websites also aid-in solving effective SEO purposes.

-Mr. Anjan Dhar

(Business Development Manager)

The need of users changes time to time. So a website is needed to have the tools for them to be better. Things further changes as people demand more.

-Mr. Andrew Rogers

(Marketing Manager)