When considering a website revamp, one process that is critical is the content migration from an old to a new website. However, despite the importance, it’s still often the most underrated part of the procedure.

For some, the process can be fast and seamless particularly when the new and old websites are similar in terms of structure. But, for sites that are transferring to a more complex layout, the migration can take more time to finish.

If you consider moving your content to a new management system, you should know that it’s something that should be done with careful planning and attention. In this article, we’ll guide you through everything you need to get started and what you are about to deal with:

A Step-by-Step Guide to a Successful CMS Migration

There are different ways to get started, but the approaches most websites take are generally broken down into three steps.

1. Create a Master List of Content

For every organization, the migration should start off with creating an inventory of all the existing content you plan to migrate. The inventory should list the texts and images and also the links, metadata, permissions and everything that must be carried over to maintain the authority and SEO value of your website. It should also detail where the content is stored and how it will be migrated.

TIP: Google Spreadsheets is a valuable tool to help you keep track of all these. Here, you can easily note their migration status and what update needs to be done in order to complete the process.

2. Define Your Strategy

Establishing your strategy is key for a successful and streamlined migration and when doing so, you generally have two options: programmatic and hand migration. However, most migrations use a little of both. It seems convenient to have a third party to clean up the pages and manually integrate them to a new CMS. But, it’s still important to get your hands in the process.

After the strategy is created, you should then determine the right CMS system for you. There are countless of options – WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento among many others. However, you have to opt for one that can support your needs, also considering their ease of use, features, security and support.

3. Test Your Migration

Finally, before you rush for implementation, test your migration first on a staging server. In this process, all the possible risks should be identified and addressed accordingly so the actual migration will run smoothly and successfully.

It often takes several days or weeks to complete the migration. But, once successfully done, you can be confident that it can provide your customers the best services possible. You can also further improve your consumer experience by outsourcing your NOC services.

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Author Bio:

Darrell Smith is a data/cybersecurity news junkie. He spends most of his time surfing the web for the latest data and network operations center trends. He also shares his recent findings through his articles and other blog posts.