[CMS] Content migration: options and strategies

[Adriaan M. Bloem]

Hi James,

Well -- I'd really wish I had something clever to add, but you've
covered all bases -- any "ah, but..." I had while reading turned out
to be addressed in one of the next paragraphs.

So only one minor thing... in my experience, as you've write as well,
automated or semi-automated migration is rarely an option (you did a
great job explaining why). At the same time, having the regular
content managers, webmasters, editors etcetera do everything by hand
is usually not a viable alternative, either (since you want as short a
freeze as possible, and the core team will often simply be too small
to manage; and if it takes too long, they'll have to do this parallel
to their regular job of maintaining the website, doubling the
workload). And again, you're right in saying that semi-skilled helping
hands most often won't be able to discern what to rewrite, how to
rewrite, where the new content should go, etcetera. (Semi-skilled of
course doesn't mean "uneducated" but rather "they won't know enough
about the subject matter and/or have the expertise as to what makes a
great site, and won't have the time to learn").


So what often happens is that "skilled" editors are brought in. Worst
case, these are junior IT consultants (great at building templates --
terrible at doing the editorial stuff for a website, and expensive, to
boot). Best case, they're professional web editors -- but they still
won't know about your project, your strategy, plans and subject matter
enough to make a big difference (other than just a lot of plain
copy/pasting).

So whereas most people seem to recognize it takes that skill to move
items to the right place in the new site, rewrite some of it, reject
other pages -- they tend to remedy this by getting expensive outside
help, and in doing so, get the worst of both worlds.


The crux of course is that sifting through the existing content,
noting where it should go, and when applicable marking it obsolete or
up for a rewrite, is only a relatively modest amount of time (though
I'm all for paperless offices, you could even just print it all out
and go through it with a marker, which could be pretty quick; you
could also take all the titles, and given a resident web editor will
already more or less know the content, that's enough to sort in a
spreadsheet, mark the target, etc). Getting the original content,
separating text from design and multimedia, uploading that to the new
system, pasting the text, etcetera is the tedious 95% of the work.

So all the regular editors should be involved in the pre-selection.
Then just get a couple of students a comfortable desk job for the
holidays in transferring it to the right place. You'll only need one
person to coordinate what they do if the directions are clear. It'll
save you a lot of money, and more importantly, your regular editors
won't be stressed to the point of breaking during the migration. When
it's done, they can relax and just check if everything is in the right
place.

Cheers,
Adriaan M. Bloem
__
Radagio - Content Management Strategy
Benoordenhoutseweg 23, 2596 BA The Hague, The Netherlands
web: http://www.radagio.com; mail: bloem at radagio.com

CMSWatch.com Contributing Analyst
mail: abloem at cmswatch.com



On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 7:26 PM, James Robertson <jamesr at steptwo.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've just published an article on the options for migrating content
> when redesigning a website or intranet:
>
> http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_migration/index.html
>
> Would be interested to hear everyone's thoughts...
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
> --
> -------------------------
> James Robertson, Managing Director
> Step Two Designs
>
> Email: jamesr at steptwo.com.au
> Web: www.steptwo.com.au
> Phone: +61 2 9319 7901
>
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