Is it possible to paste raw HTML code to SharePoint 2013?

Question

One of my clients has a very basic website running the CMS Joomla. The website in question has no modules, no flash, just basic content. He wants his website to be running on SharePoint instead. I've been looking around on the Internet for software that can do this, but none of them seem to be able to do it automatically, or the licenses are completely overpriced (over 10 000$).

My question is, unless you guys have a miracle software for me, can i copy and paste the raw HTML pages directly to SharePoint? Will the website look the same? Can i bring over the css style sheets and whatnot? I'm a simple System Administrator, so my programming knowledge is limited. Thanks in advance for your support!

Answer 1

Technically there's no reason why you can't do this. It's not without it's challenges though. Maybe copying the content into wiki pages would be more practical?

However, assuming you do want to go the HTML route, in SharePoint you can create a document library and upload any type of content, including HTML pages. You can also add folders and those will work in the same way as folders in the file system. However, by default SharePoint will prevent the HTML files from being displayed directly in the browser for security reasons (a user could easily modify the HTML files to contain some nefarious script). You can workaround this by checking out this post:

From the post:

You can modify SharePoint’s behavior by changing the Browser File Handling option in the Web Application General Settings of SharePoint 2010. Your options are permissive and strict, with strict being the default.

The difficult part will be to keep the file structure the same so that links etc. still work. For example, if you create a document library called 'WebPages' and upload your content there, all of your html pages will be at http://yoursite.com/webpages/yourpage.html which probably isn't what you want if they were previously at the root. To address this you'd need to use redirects. Rewrites would be nicer but aren't officially supported in any practical capacity since the platform makes extensive use of them internally.

The official statement on support of rewrites can be found here

Using SharePoint Designer, you can change the default homepage to pretty much anything, including one of your uploaded HTML pages. Maybe that's enough if your site is simple and you don't mind breaking existing deep links.

To do that you'd open SharePoint Designer, select All Files from the left bar and then navigate to your document library. Once you find the file you want as the homepage simply right-click on it and select 'Set as Homepage'.

Answer 2

The first thing I'd ask is, if the website is basic and running on Joomla, why does your client want it running on SharePoint? Using SharePoint for a "very basic website" doesn't seem like the best use of the tool, and will create more hassle than what it's worth, not to mention be far more costly.