Web Content Management

Chapter 13. Content Migration

Imagine making the greatest ice cream sundae in the world. First, you start out with the best ingredients—sweet cream, cane sugar, real vanilla—and then you spend hours mixing them together.¹ You add real whipping cream, homemade hot fudge, and the sweetest, most perfectly ripe banana and cherry the world has ever seen.

Then, to complete the masterpiece, you finish it off with a massive squirt of…ketchup.

You were doing great right up until the very end.

This is the story of many content migrations—the task of moving the existing content out of your old CMS and into your new CMS. Just as problems tend to occur when focusing too much on the software rather than the implementation, the exact same thing happens when those two are given too much precedence and the content migration is ignored. Organizations will find the perfect CMS, manage a fantastic implementation, and then completely botch the project at the very end with a disastrous content migration.

Remember, a CMS manages content. It’s only as good as the content you put into it. And the content your organization currently manages might be the result of years and years of creation, aggregation, and management. There could easily be millions of dollars invested in this content as a business asset. Ignoring this final phase of your project is disrespecting that content and devaluing all the effort that’s gone into it.

Migrations are often viewed as “extra” work. However, in some ...