Installing Joomla into nonempty website

[warpw]

Hello, I will be installing Joomla 3 on already established site that use no content management system so far and I would like to let the current site online after the Joomla is installed before the site will be developed in Joomla - and not to delete the old content on any way after that. What's the best way to do this, please?

I know that I can install Joomla to a new empty subfolder, but I don't want the URLs to look like

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http://domain-name.com/name-of-joomla-folder/my-page-titles

but without the name of Joomla folder. Can I install Joomla into nonempty root folder that already contains index.php? Or install it into subfolder and then move all the contents of it into the root folder and mix Joomla CMS content with already existing folders and files? I know that the site owner won't want the old content to be removed even after the Joomla site is created. Thank you.

[toivo]

I will be installing Joomla 3 on already established site that use no content management system so far

It would be better to plan to migrate the current content to Joomla so that the whole site can be managed in a CMS. Otherwise you will end up in a mess.

the site owner won't want the old content to be removed even after the Joomla site is created

The site owner must have some reasons but whether they are valid is a different question.

[sovainfo]

It is not a problem to have both sites in your webspace. Suggest to move the current site to a subfolder and install joomla in a different subfolder. Use subdomains to refer to each. Than there is no need to have the folder in the url, the subdomain takes care of it.

You can't have both installed in the root. A file or folder needs to belong to one those sites. A Joomla site depends on the index.php, how should it determine the request is for the existing site?

If you don't want the url to differentiate between the sites there must be an algorithm for .htaccess to do that.