Content migration made simple: Streamline your website transition

Highlights

You’ll learn how to migrate your content to Contentstack:

• Plan and prepare
  • Set clear goals and objectives
  • Review content taxonomy and metadata for SEO

• Use automation tools
  • Automate workflows with Contentstack Automate
  • Simplify tagging and publishing processes

• API for bulk content transfer
  • Use APIs for successful content migration and integration with software like CRMs and DAMs

• Execute & test
  • Perform test migrations
  • Ensure quality assurance with UAT and functional testing

Migrate with ease using Contentstack for better performance, efficiency and user experience.

Migrating content from one Content Management System (CMS) to another is similar to moving houses. If you don’t have much stuff, relocating to a new house will be easy. But if your house is stacked with thousands of items, carefully moving your items requires careful planning. 

The problem becomes a headache when large organizations with thousands of pages decide to migrate to a new CMS platform. Manually recreating every page and asset is time and resource-intensive (the chances of committing mistakes are highest). That’s where content migration steps in. By automating the transfer of your content from a legacy CMS to a headless CMS, you free your digital team. Otherwise, they would have to spend countless hours setting up new pages perfectly. 

Though challenging, a hiccup-free content migration is achievable with guidance and tools. 

What is content migration?

Content migration is the process of moving your existing content and digital assets, such as images, videos, text, documents and web pages, from one CMS or website to another more advanced platform, such as a headless CMS. It’s more than a mere lifting and moving of content. Content migration preserves functionality and focuses on strategic redesign and restructuring of content and taxonomy. Redesigning and restructuring ensure your content and digital assets adapt to new systems. 

Companies undergo migration process for these reasons:

• Upgrading their CMS
• Reducing costs
• Combining multiple websites or CMSs
• Redesigning websites
• Restructuring content

Benefits of a successful migration include:

• Better performance
• More SEO opportunities
• Simplified maintenance
• Improved efficiency
• Streamlined workflow
• Enhanced user experience
• Updated technology stack
• Increased scalability

How do you migrate content to Contentstack?

1. Plan and prepare

Begin your content migration by creating a plan. A well-thought-out plan forms the backbone of a smooth migration. 

Define the goals and objectives

Outline what you want to achieve from your content migration strategy. Your goal could be improving website performance, streamlining content management or enhancing user experience. Align these objectives with broader organizational goals. 

Review content structure and taxonomy

Evaluate your current content structures, hierarchies, taxonomy and tagging structure to understand how they work. For instance, consider how product/service categories and tags are set up on your site. Are they helping users find what they need or creating confusion? Consider how these structures impact navigation, usability and user experience. Pay attention to gaps and inefficiencies that you can improve. Use these insights to plan the transfer of these structures and taxonomy to a new platform, keeping what works or adjusting them to fit your needs.

Identify metadata fields

Identifying metadata fields before content migration is crucial because metadata influences how content is organized and displayed. Metadata helps in SEO optimization, as elements like titles, descriptions keywords directly affect search engine visibility. To identify your metadata fields, look at your current content to see what metadata you already use (titles, descriptions and keyword tags). Communicate with your SEO and content teams to determine which fields keep your search engine rankings and user experience intact.

Before migration, assess what the new content management system requires and see if you need any new metadata fields. Document everything so everyone knows what each field is for and how to use it. This groundwork will smooth the migration process and help keep your content's integrity and functionality intact in its new home.

Other key aspects to plan

Identify CMS-specific plugins that impact content and review elements like custom styling, content annotations and original content HTML tags. Consider the migration of comments associated with posts and banner spaces that might not transfer categories or tags linked to the content.

When migrating a series, understand how to structure the table of contents. If your CMS includes registered users, plan for user data. A comprehensive approach ensures a smooth and efficient migration process. 

2. Use the Contentstack Automate feature

When working through content migration, use automation to simplify repetitive tasks and maintain consistency. Contentstack offers tools to make your migration process smoother and more efficient. With Contentstack’s Automate functionality, you can reduce manual processes by automating approval workflows, scheduling updates and adding tags to specific content. This speeds up migration while reducing human error. 

The benefits of using the Contentstack Automate feature are:

Streamlined content approval

Contentstack’s Automate makes content approval easier by allowing you to set up custom workflows. As a result, your content is reviewed before it goes live. With automated notifications and reminders sent to the right stakeholders, you can streamline the process and avoid unnecessary migration delays.

Effortless publishing

Content publishing doesn’t need to be a tedious chore. With Automate, you can schedule publishing in advance or set it to trigger based on specific criteria. This means your content goes live when you want it to, without manually publishing. 

Simplified content tagging

Another area where Automate shines is content tagging. Instead of relying on manual tagging, use predefined rules to set automatic, proper, standardized tags. This gives your content proper structure; you will not have to wade through clutter, sloppy tags or irrelevant tags. Unwanted or irrelevant tags can make searching and managing the content a headache.

3. Migration process with API

When moving your content to Contentstack, use the available features to make the migration seamless. Easy data transfer and integration are useful and that's what Contentstack’s API does.

Transferring bulk content

Companies use spreadsheets or CSV files for content authoring and Contentstack's Automate feature streamlines bulk operations, making content management efficient and scalable. When your team uses these bulk operations, you can update large volumes of content quickly, reduce errors and automate regular updates, improving collaboration across teams.

Moreover, Contentstack’s APIs can handle a large volume of content transfer. The Content Management API can read, update and create content programmatically, helping you migrate complex data structures. These APIs simplify the process when moving content from one CMS to another headless CMS like Contentstack. Also, review what content you’re moving. Don’t waste your time migrating anything that doesn’t serve a purpose on your new system.

API-based integration

You should consider API-based integrations with your existing systems, such as CRM or DAM platforms. This is an opportunity to sync your content seamlessly and create a more unified ecosystem. A unified content ecosystem can streamline workflows, improve team collaboration and ensure data consistency across platforms. 

API-based integration offers:

• Smooth workflows
• Improves consistency across platforms

4. Execute the migration

Before initiating a content migration, execute and verify a complete backup of the original content to prevent data loss. Once this is done, disable the website’s crawlability to avoid search engines indexing your site during migration. Proceed by performing a test migration in a controlled environment to identify and address potential issues. If no issues persist, execute phased migration. Verify that every aspect of your migration aligns with the predefined acceptance criteria for a seamless transition. If the migration involves changing the domain, update the DNS settings accordingly and configure automatic redirection to maintain accessibility and SEO continuity.

After executing the migration, ensure all data is accurately transferred. Finally, enable the new site while restoring its crawlability to become operational and indexed by search engines.

5. Focus on quality assurance

Thorough quality assurance is essential for successful and correct content migration. 

Perform QA 

Perform quality assurance, such as content integrity, to verify that all migrated content is accurately presented and formatted. You can also perform functional testing on interactive elements like user authentication. Data integrity testing verifies the accuracy and integrity of the migrated data by confirming that its original structure and metadata are preserved. These validation checks identify potential discrepancies or corruption issues. 

User acceptance testing (UAT)

You can collect end-user feedback to determine how usable your systems are and how they’re performing. The UAT testing phase identifies inconsistencies and gaps that might arise in the real world, allowing for adjustments and improvements. When involving end users in the testing process, you:

• Collect valuable insights
• Enhance user satisfaction
• Provide a smooth transition to the new data environment.

Alternatively, perform security testing to ensure your user data is protected and all your access controls work as expected. 

6. Launch the content

After completing the testing, it’s time to go live. Collaborate with your team to execute a well-planned and phased launch for minimal disruption to your users and stakeholders. A phased approach to content launch reduces risks. Migrate your content in strategic batches, test it and address real-time issues. Once migration is complete, monitor the CMS and search engine performance. 

Case study: How did Simmons & Simmons streamline content management and migration with Contentstack?

When Simmons & Simmons faced creative challenges with its legacy CMS, they migrated to Contentstack, a headless CMS that provides greater control over presentation and content. The platform managed content updates with its intuitive interface and features like modular blocks. They could make quick changes without breaking pages. The API-supported content migration empowered the business to scale while maintaining authority over its data. Updates that took days now take hours, improving user and editor experiences.

After using Contentstack, Taslima Yousuf, Digital Business Analyst at Simmons & Simmons, said:

“There’s no doubt that we can manage our systems better. Upgrading to new versions or packages is so much easier we can connect two different sites through data models, while still using one CMS to manage both and control them together. And we’ve built in our access management software so that we can keep the same level of control.”

Read the complete case study here. 

FAQs

What is the meaning of content migration?

Content migration transfers content between systems or platforms, including text and media metadata, often during website redesigns or CMS transitions.

What is the content migration approach?

The migration approach helps you plan content structure, prepare assets, use automation tools and conduct quality assurance testing for a seamless transfer.

What is website content migration?

Website content migration focuses on transferring all content from one platform to another while preserving SEO and user experience functionality.

Learn more

Remember that content migration doesn’t happen frequently. They happen when performing a major overhaul of your website. As migrations are complex, they require time and resources to succeed. That’s why transitioning to a headless CMS like Contentstack can streamline the content migration. The tool offers reliable migration and solves potential issues that might crop up. A successful migration is a lethal combination of meticulous planning and tools like Contentstack. 

For effortless content migration, talk to us.