This document summarizes a workshop on planning for a website migration. It discusses establishing a compelling vision for the migration, inventorying content and other assets, and controlling factors like quality, content weight, and migration distance to minimize risks. Key steps outlined are setting a vision, conducting inventories, controlling quality levels, estimating effort, and iterating the planning process.

1. Website Migration Workshop
Part 1: Planning
Gilbane Boston 2012 @jdavidhobbs

2. Quick poll
• Where are you in the migration process?
1) Considering it? 2) Planning?
3) Migrating now? 4) Getting over one?
• How many of you have done a migration in
the past? If so, did it go as planned?
• Are you part of an internal web team?
• Are 1) you yourself migrating content or 2)
planning or overseeing that?
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3. My primary goal
Ways to avoid surprises and train wrecks
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4. Migrations are interesting!
Boring Interesting
Cutting and pasting - Searching for patterns
- Improving your content
One-time exercise - Setting up a long term program
Unending - Develop tracking metrics
Unimportant - Critical to success
Ramming in content - Exposing (non-migration)
problems
http://bit.ly/cm-interest
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5. What is a website migration?
The transfer of content, sites/sections,
functionality, team, templates, information
architecture, and relationships from one
platform to another – Website Migration
Handbook v2
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6. What is a website migration?
The transfer of content, sites/sections,
functionality, team, templates, information
architecture, and relationships from one
platform to another – Website Migration
Handbook v2
Not just content!
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7. What is a website migration?
The transfer of content, sites/sections,
functionality, team, templates, information
Every
architecture, and relationships from one
platform to another – Website Migration
migration
Handbook v2
is
different!
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8. You are moving
a weight
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9. You are moving
a weight across a distance
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10. You are moving
less distance is preferable
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11. You are moving
less weight is preferable
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12. You should control both
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13. Where are you?
Answer 10 questions to gauge where you
are and where you are going:
http://bit.ly/s-eval
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14. Compelling Vision
 Most stakeholders say it’s compelling
 Not just for small group
 Understandable by all
 Substantial improvement
 Can help prioritize
 Justifies migration
 Short
 Achievable
 Widely communicated
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15. Planning Process
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16. What can and cannot be automated
http://bit.ly/migauto
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17. Don’t just consider the movement of content –
there are important steps before and after
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18. Use a consistent
approach
to batch content http://bit.ly/panning

19. Except for small
sites, don’t do all
steps for each
content item

20. Content Handling Process
http://bit.ly/contenthandling
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21. Computing Manual Effort
Manual Effort for Bucket =
Content Count x
(Sort Effort + Place Effort + Edit Effort + Move /
Transform Effort + Enhance Effort + QA Effort)
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22. @jdavidhobbs http://hobbsontech.com 22

23. What is a website migration?
The transfer of content, sites/sections,
functionality, team, templates, information
architecture, and relationships from one
platform to another – Website Migration
Handbook v2
Many / most should be inventoried
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24. What is a website migration?
The transfer of content, sites/sections,
functionality, team, templates, information
architecture, and relationships from one
platform to another – Website Migration
Handbook v2
Pay particular attention to content
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25. Rethinking the Content Inventory
1. Exploration
2. Sources of Data
3. Site Inventories
4. Layers of Content
5. Topic Inventories
6. Quality
http://bit.ly/rethink-ci
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26. Why control your weight
1) Migration is a perfect opportunity to
better focus your site and improve
quality by dropping content
2) It’s an opportunity to talk about your
content in general
3) Less weight is easier to migrate
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27. Rules-based culling example
Define
Inventory Confirm Implement
Rules
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28. Rules-based culling example
Define
Inventory Confirm Implement
Rules
Example rules:
• If business focus is high, then edit
• If less than six page views in the last month, then drop
• If the page is in version 2, then move as-is
• If the page is in version 1 and more than 100 page views in the last month,
then as-is
• Otherwise, drop
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29. Rules-based culling example
Define
Inventory Confirm Implement
Rules
Also
see case
study
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30. Distance is from where you are
If you already have a base station on the
moon, then moving to the next crater might
be easy.
If you live in a cardboard box, then moving
into an apartment down the street may be
difficult.
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31. One aspect of distance
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32. Controlling Distance
• Phase
• Modify depth of support
• Eliminate functionality entirely
• Concentrate on highest bang for the buck
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33. Also control quality
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34. One of the most important controls you
have at your disposal is quality level, and
it isn’t just a simple yes / no toggle
switch
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35. Some quality level questions
• What elements that currently are unmanaged
will be managed?
• How will links within the content be handled?
How will redirects happen?
• In general, what HTML transformation needs
to occur?
• How accurate does placement and tagging
need to be?
• What backend structure should be in place?
What default values will be used?
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36. Important quality tidbits
• Even if you go with the incumbent team /
tool capabilities, you should ask yourself
what level of quality you expect.
• Talking about quality early avoids
expectation surprises when it’s too late.
• When reviewing quality expectations,
consider who is responsible for attaining
that quality level and also who will test that
this is done.
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37. Summary
1. Set your vision
2. Inventory
3. Control quality, weight and distance
4. Estimate
5. Iterate
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38. Thanks!
Use discount code ‘boston’ for $25 off v2 handbook
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