Migration
After the first four steps are finished the true content migration can start. Migrations can roughly be divided in three types. Depending on the migration strategy chosen one of the following methods will be used.
One time migration
The content will be migrated in one iteration. Preceding the migration some test and evaluation migrations will take place, but the final migration will take place in one big bang.
Step-by-step migration
The current website will be logically divided and will then be migrated part for part. This creates extra time for the performance of migration tests and training the organization and it will make the migration less dependent of the setup of the new CMS and the development of new templates.
Synchronisation/ integration
When the current CMS will be available for a certain period parallel to the new CMS, it is possible to synchronize the content. This means that a change, made by an editor in the old CMS, will automatically be migrated to the new CMS and published on the site.
Migrate to the CMS
During the migration, clean, transformed and enriched content will be offered for import in the form of XML. Each XML-file is converted to the required format, each content element in the XML is provided with a unique ID and additional information for the reconstruction of the relations in the new CMS. The import is also an extra control procedure that checks whether the provided XML meet the needs of the new CMS.
How do I limit the content freeze?
A content freeze during a migration means that the entering and editing of content in the old system will be stopped the moment the migration starts. When the migration is finished the content freeze stops but a content hole will remain. This can be solved by double entry for example but there are several disadvantages and risks involved. Each change must be recorded in both systems but this is labor-intensive and error-prone.
With automatic migration the content freeze can be minimised or reduced to zero.
During migration the process can be repeated for a specific part of the content set. After the large migration a delta migration can be performed to collect, clean, enrich and migrate the content from the last four hours or the last day. Delta migrations performed repeatedly for long periods are called synchronization.