Migration webpages from Server 2003 to Ubuntu+Apache - doable?

Question

We've an old server 2003, running IIS 6.0, that I'm hoping to decommission and move over to our main hosting platform (which runs Ubuntu Lucid and Apache 2.2.14, with php 5.3-ish). I'm trying to find a solution to bring across over the old websites, if possible. I might be trying to reinvent the wheel here, not sure.

Webages on that IIS are old. Very old. Most of which are ancient, Geocities-style HTML ones (no ASP.Net though). Some use Frontpage extensions. default.htm might not be interpreted as the index page. Let's assume that it's not a problem, and we leave the task of updating the code to users. No databases whatsoever behind those websites.

Suppose I already created the vhost on the Linux side, that's the easy part.

How do I go about exporting and transferring everything in the application pool from a Windows to a Linux environment? Is there an application that does this, hopefully not a proprietary one? A Google search mostly returned "don't do it" kind of results, as the platforms are not very compatible - but I guess I'm looking for a second opinion. There's a tool to do it the other way around (Apache to IIS), there has to be something out there.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It sounds like you are mostly serving up HTML pages. This should move with no difficulty. You can alter the list of pages Apache uses as the default index page and include default.htm by adjusting the DirectoryIndex directive applies to the site.

It has been a long time since, I've encountered Frontpage content. If I remember correctly, the extensions related to providing live editing functionality. There are newer mechanisms update content. I've used both push and pull mechanisms with version control software.

It is also possible to overlay a content management system over the site to allow serving updated content using the content management system while old pages are served from disk.