Planning a Website Migration to Craft

Let’s dis­cuss the key con­sid­er­a­tions for a Craft migra­tion — mov­ing a site into Craft CMS. In this first video, we’ll walk through what you need to consider.

First, do you have the Craft mind­set? Can you look at a web­site design and iden­ti­fy how dif­fer­ent con­tent pieces would fit into Craft? Can you think in terms of Craft’s ecosys­tem and how it works?

If you’re not famil­iar with Craft, you’ll want to get acquaint­ed first. You can watch the course here on CraftQuest called ​“The Craft Mind­set,” which will guide you through what to con­sid­er. If you’re still unsure, con­sid­er work­ing with an expe­ri­enced Craft devel­op­er or con­sul­tant to help gauge the scope of your migra­tion project. They can help set the path and fore­see poten­tial pitfalls.

If you’re unsure about han­dling the migra­tion your­self, con­sid­er hir­ing a spe­cial­ist for the data migra­tion. They can focus on this cru­cial aspect while leav­ing tem­plate imple­men­ta­tion to your team. It’s often bet­ter to work with a data migra­tion spe­cial­ist rather than a gen­er­al­ist, as they can quick­ly cre­ate cus­tom setups to extract and manip­u­late data as needed.

The Craft mind­set is cru­cial when migrat­ing data to Craft or under­tak­ing a project with a data migra­tion com­po­nent. Anoth­er key con­sid­er­a­tion is whether the site you’re build­ing or migrat­ing is a good fit for Craft. Does it play to Craft’s strengths? Are you try­ing to build some­thing that Craft isn’t nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed for, like a com­plex social net­work­ing site?

I like to use a ​“smell test” or ​“gut check” here. When you have expe­ri­ence, you’ll get a feel­ing about whether a project is a good fit for Craft. The site should pass this intu­itive test.

Next, review and doc­u­ment the site’s func­tion­al­i­ty. Can Craft capa­bly han­dle what the site needs to do? For exam­ple, can it han­dle form sub­mis­sions, blog pub­lish­ing, sim­ple e‑commerce, or nest­ed pages for land­ing pages? If Craft can’t han­dle some­thing out of the box, is there a plu­g­in avail­able, or will you need a cus­tom solution?

Check if the exist­ing site uses any crit­i­cal plu­g­ins. Are there sim­i­lar plu­g­ins avail­able for Craft? Will you need to devel­op cus­tom plu­g­ins or mod­ules? Iden­ti­fy any hid­den func­tion­al­i­ty that might not work out of the box with Craft.

Con­sid­er file-based resources like images, PDFs, or down­load files. Where are they stored? How are they deliv­ered? Can they be moved to a CDN? Will these resources need to be migrat­ed as asset ele­ments in Craft?

Think about the site’s design and tem­plates. Will you keep the same design or rebuild? Are there any embed­ded func­tion­al­i­ties in the tem­plates that might be chal­leng­ing to migrate? Look for PHP or oth­er code in the tem­plates that affects how the site func­tions or out­puts content.

Final­ly, con­sid­er any unique fea­tures that might be chal­leng­ing, such as cal­en­dar­ing or spe­cial user account fea­tures. Doc­u­ment these and rate their dif­fi­cul­ty in terms of imple­men­ta­tion in Craft.

These are the key points to con­sid­er before start­ing your Craft migra­tion. In the upcom­ing videos, we’ll dive into hands-on migra­tion, dis­cuss dif­fer­ent tools, and explore how to migrate data from var­i­ous CMSs. Thanks for watch­ing, and I’ll see you in the next video.