This presentation will focus on removing the myths about migrations, a guide to the intelligent pre-migration preparation and includes a demonstration of TERMINALFOUR's Automated migration tool in action.
View the presentation in full here: https://youtu.be/NxCfUbvpSDc
Exploring the Future Potential of AI-Enabled Smartphone Processors
T44u 2015, content migration
1. Content Migration
Removing the heartache, delays and
expense
Raewyn McKenna – Business Analyst
Defining Digital Engagement
for Higher Education
2. • The reality of Content Migrations
• Where do most of the problems lie?
• Manual or automated migration?
• Pre-migration preparation tasks
• 4 Pro Tips
• Demo of the TERMINALFOUR Migration solution
• Questions
CMS Migration Webinar agenda
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
3. • Even in the best of circumstances they are a big head ache
• Unless you intimately know your content adds a high level of
risk to your project timelines.
• 100% automated content migrations are very rarely possible
• Additional risk where:
• No existing CMS or database tool powering web content
• Developed by many developers over many years
• Developed using many tools over many years
• Exceptions in the code or design?
The reality of Content Migrations
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
4. • Team frustration – content migration is a very boring &
stressful project activity
• Feels like a relentless activity
• A lot of activity to get you to where you are right now
(presuming the content doesn’t need to be re-written)
• Budget overruns & project delays
Worst case scenarios
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
5. • Migrating a “page based” CMS into a more powerful CMS
• Website appears consistent but isn’t (at HTML code level)
• Moving to a new responsive design: Tables, Images etc.
• Content quality – is it worth migrating?
• Insufficient resources available to quality control content
• When migrating from HTML: URLs versus Breadcrumbs
versus Sitemap are widely different
Where do most of the problems lie?
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
6. Types of migrations
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
Manual
• The amount of content to be migrated <1500 pages
• Is content well structured & marked-up correctly?
• Complexity of the original web site
Auto
DB
• Is the content within a documented database?
• If a commercial system, does your software license allow you to give access to the
database to a third party?
• Able to import meta data, but cannot resolve links or import media (e.g. images and files)
Auto
Website
• Is it coming from another CMS?
• Is the HTML source consistent?
• Are you able to and have the skills to easy add extra tags?
7. 1. Manual or
Automated?
Purge?
2. Analyse the Data
3. Configure the
Migration Tool
4. Run the
Migration
5. Test / QA
6. Manual updates
Typical process
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
Automated Migration Steps Summarised
8. TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
Migration check list
STEP 1 :
Manual of
automated?
Inventory all sites
and content to be
migrated (any
surprises?)
Content quality?
Media files
STEP 2 :
Analysis the data
How to determine
the Site
Structure?
What is the
structure of the
content (pages)?
STEP 3 :
Configure the
Migration Tool
Map the
elements from
the existing pages
to the new
content types
Do you need to
merge “content
types”?
9. TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
Migration check list
STEP 4 :
Running the
Migration
Phases or “big bang”? Test
runs?
Any large media files?
“Hidden” sections?
STEP 5 :
Test/QA
What resources are available
to help test?
In a new design: Images,
Tables etc.
Two types of manual review
are required: Content &
Migration quality
Define your QA methodology
early
STEP 6 :
Manual Update
Some manual updates
required in order to fix issues
& exceptions
10. • Get started on the Content Migration activities as early as
possible in your project
• To get a head start, using your existing CMS, work on re-
writing (and deleting) content
• Set realistic expectations as to the level of risk and effort
involved
• Use the content migration activity to purge defunct content
4 Pro Tips
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
12. • TERMINALFOUR provides two content migration features:
• Database import (called Content Syncer)
• HTML import
• Out-of-the-box feature (not “scripts”)
• Today’s focus, HTML Import:
• Can import any mark-up provided it’s relatively consistent
• Downloads site from web address
• Sites can be migrated in phases (detects when links need to be
updated in previously imported content)
Overview
TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015
Clarify that much of this advice can be applied to other systems
Size of websites <500 web pages just do manually
Circumstances for migrating content – new websites being built (either from static or another CMS), moving to another instance of TERMINALFOUR.
Head ache because you are dealing with how content was developed historically and it highlights every short-cut and hack that was ever developed.
Know your content intimately – know how each of your template works and all customisations added over time, know all the content on your site (i.e. analyse your sitemap) – do you even need all of that content?
How to deal with the remainder – do you migrate it at all? Do you do it manually?
Budget triangle – quality/speed/cost – can only do 2 well.
The time it takes to migrate a site is not down to the number of pages, but rather down to the complexity and/or the number of different types of content.
Page based – example of YouTube videos on different pages.
Resources – get content owners involved.
Site Structure – if there are breadcrumbs, we usually use it. Otherwise, we use the URL (folder structure).