We Have a Plan (for migration)

This blog is from a presentation at the We Are Digital Commons event on October 29, 2019. 

With 60+ websites to migrate, we have a general plan that can be adapted to each agency. You’ll be glad to know that we’re going to automatically migrate your website content. We’ll start with small, straightforward websites, and perfect the process before moving on to larger, complex sites. The amount of time each migration takes will of course depend on size and complexity. We hope to make the process as painless for you as possible, but we have to work together on the project – your agency’s web team will be fully involved. There may be areas where D7 and D8 don’t match perfectly, so we’ll work together to make decisions about how to handle any anomalies.

The Plan (tentatively, of course)

Three months before we plan for your site to migrate, we’ll get in touch with your agency. You have insider information that might affect the schedule – personnel availability, high-traffic times, special initiatives or events, periods when a large amount of new content is created, or other factors that affect the timing of the migration. So we’ll want to know if the planned date works for you. We'll begin the migrations in the spring of 2020.

At the same time 3-month time, we’ll give you a roadmap – an analysis of your site to start migration preparation and identify any anomalous areas that need a specific migration strategy. There is also some preparation work you can all do now. (See the blog titled Tidying Up for the Big Move)

This graphic shows who’s doing what, and when. (Please note this timeline is not to scale; the length will vary by website.) The green areas of the graphic show your agency's work, the blue areas show what we are doing along with you. The three-month period begins with your kickoff. Along with the Roadmap, we’ll give you a Statement of Work that describes the project and the main roles and responsibilities. If the proposed migration date works for you, we’ll ask you to sign and accept the Statement of Work and commit to the project. This is a good time for you to identify your project team – who will work on normalizing content, who is responsible for different areas of the site, who will approve the new site, etc.

After you've got your team selected and have prepped your site, we’ll start with a scripted migration of your site to a new, unpublished prod instance. You’ll be able to log in to the site, just as you currently do, with all your users and permissions intact. Your web team and the Digital Solutions team will review for any problems, make sure that everything transferred okay. We need you to review the entire site page by page, because you’re the experts on what should be on your site. Your existing site is still active, so you can compare back and forth. Also during this time period, we’ll provide training for your site admins and site managers, so you’ll be able to take over the managing of your site immediately.

Any issues?

If needed, we’ll do another migration with an amended script that addresses anything that broke. Your web team will do any manual work that’s needed, which we anticipate will be minimal. Both teams will review the site and ensure it’s accurate and complete. When you approve it, the new site launches and replaces the old one.  And, voila! You have a modern, improved, future-ready website!