Common Migration Challenges And How To Solve Them
Written by: Rashmi
Migrating from an older CMS to a new one is a leap of faith for business owners. If done well, it can streamline your workflow. But one wrong step and the bottom line is affected. Since the stakes are so high, it is always better to prepare before starting the execution.
There are a few common migrations challenges that almost every business face. If you are planning to do CMS migration, you should be vary of these common challenges. Down below, we have mentioned the three most common CMS migrations challenges and how to solve them. Read on.
Data Conversion
The data output on your website or app might look like a mix of text, pictures, and videos, but it is a bunch of codes on the backend. Different types of CMSs use different sets of tech-stack. So, the first challenge that you are going to face during CMS conversion is transforming your data for compatibility to the new CMS.
If you have been using an old CMS for years, there are high chances that your current data format is outdated. If you face a problem during the conversion process, you can take help from the building team of the new CMS.
Losing Search Engine Ranks
It takes months and even years to rank a piece of content on a search engine. But the same piece of content can lose its rank within days when you migrate from one CMS to another. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about search-engine rankings if you execute the migration process properly.
If you are changing the URLs to a new format, you have to make sure that all the old URLs redirect to the new ones. If you don’t do it, website viewers and search engines will land themselves on 404 Error Pages. The easiest way to manage this is to deploy 301 HTTP Redirects for every page and update your sitemap for all the search engines like Google, Binge, etc.
Downtime
Downtime is a technical name for the time during which your website or app is not working because they are in the middle of the CMS migration process. Ideally, you should have zero to negligible downtime. Otherwise, you are going to lose a small pie of your business which is not preferable at any cost.
You can bypass the downtime to a large extent by deploying the CMS migration in different stages. First, the new content should be set up in a staging environment. If the content matches the older content, only then it should be made live.
How To Solve The Challenges - The Sure Shot Way
The best way to solve the above-mentioned challenges is not to rush the migration and take help from experts. If you have an in-house IT team, make sure that you talk about these challenges before starting the migration process. If the IT team does have a solution to these problems, you will be good to go.
At Quintype, we have automated the process of importing any website’s data from other CMS to Quintype’s CMS.
Migrator – our automation system – first analyzes the data that is present in the third-party CMS and then puts it into a standard format that is supported by Quintype. Once the new data is created, it is validated by another system called the Validator. After the files are validated, they are finally migrated into the new Quintype platform without any data loss.
If you are interested in moving your content from an outdated CMS to a new one, Quintype is here to help. Our team of developers can handhold you through the migration process.