How to rebuild an entirely static website, without changing URLs?

Question

I have a website that I was asked to "redesign".

The site itself was built and still maintained by FrontPage, so there are hundreds (hopefully not more) of HTML pages.

My main limitation is that I can't change any of the URLs because they have been there for over 10 years and have a lot of SEO value.

I want to rebuild the site in a smart way (CSS classes, dynamic pages, etc.) but also give the owner the ability to change content as he needs.

I was thinking of using WordPress, however I don't have experience with it and I'm not sure what it's limitations are.

My other issue, is that I need server side languages in order to enable this kind of site, but I don't know how to do that without changing the URLs.

And after I deal with all that, is there any way around manually handling every single page?

Any suggestions, or pushing in a certain direction are all welcome.

Answer 1

Feel free to provide new, meaningful, URLs but make 100% sure that you configure correct 301 redirects from all old URLs to the new ones.

Answer 2

You may change the permalinks from your WordPress admin section once you've written the .htaccess file. The old links of the static pages can then be redirect to new pages and links using 301 redirects which won't negatively affect the existing PageRank and SEO; see How to redirect a webpage