Transferring to Wordpress

Hi Guys,
I run a website (www.partydose.com) which was designed by my friend just after graduating from university. I am looking to change the look a bit and how things are viewed but I do not want to go through all the effort of learning the php code so I am considering moving to wordpress and then drupal once I learn how to use wordpress properly

My question is how do I go about transferring my website such that the wordpress still uses my old database that was created by my friend as it has all the links to pictures and events and other information. I tried installing wordpress on a separate domain for test purposes and it seemed to have created its own database on my server instead.

Can anyone please help me and give me tips as to how I could do this?

Thanks,
Regards,
Gourav

 

There is no ready made solution for your problem. Do you know whether your friend has used nay cms or it is his own designed database, if so then you have to convert each and every post into it's equivalent wordpress post. otherwise if your friend has used any type of cms then their may be some sort of plugins available.

 

he designed it himself but there is no comments..its all just events and images...

 

the raw contents(database) of the website is very important in this situation, it gives the the ability to manipulate the data, content and even to generate a new site...

1st step to transfer into a new domain is to "backup" and then the "restore"
just a similar way or restoring a newly formated pc.

2 ways to backup a wordpress, really

1. via xml, you can backup, then create a new domain/wordpress then restore the "xml" OR
2. backup/restore via phpmyadmin for the database, and copy paste for the HOST FILES/folder.

 

You can backup/restore between Wordpress. If old website use php/mysql with no cms, you need to upload new content manually.