The CMS change procedure
La migration CMS peut être définie comme étant un projet ou l'opération de transfert de données d’un site web vers un nouveau système de gestion. Ce transfert nécessite de déterminer le périmètre de la migration de site…
A CMS migration can be defined as the project, or the operation, of transferring a website's data to a new content management system. This transfer requires defining the scope of the website migration, which covers the elements you intend to change on the site. In other words, it clarifies the goals of the data migration. But how do you change CMS during a website migration? And what is the procedure for changing CMS?
Website migration: when changing CMS
There are several ways to change CMS in order to migrate a website. Depending on your needs, you can for example migrate to the Magento CMS or to the WordPress CMS, two cases described below.
In the CMS change procedure itself, the website migration must not be taken lightly: it requires a great deal of preparation. It is a large project that starts with a crawl: a crawler will examine the whole site. It is an effective way to find errors. An audit can also be carried out to determine the ranking level or the number of visitors of the old site.
During this crawl phase, you will have the opportunity to fix errors and remove duplicate content. But before any website migration, you must back up all the data relating to texts and photos to a storage space outside the site. This is a good habit to avoid losing files during the migration process.
Eliminate complications and ensure a smooth, hassle-free CMS change with Swan, the tool that turns the migration process into a secure and effortless experience.
For the next step, it is strongly recommended to carry out a test migration when you transfer data to a new CMS. The aim is to avoid errors during the migration.
During the data transfer, the new site on staging must remain closed to search engines (password protection, or a robots.txt file that disallows crawling). At go-live, check that the robots.txt file of the new site does allow crawling: a forgotten block can make the site disappear from Google's results.
As for activating the redirects, they will send the old pages to the new ones through 301 redirects, set up on the server or with a CMS extension.
For the post-migration checks, you will need to verify the new site with tools such as Google Search Console, which reports non-indexed pages, crawl errors and loading speed (Core Web Vitals report), not forgetting Google Analytics to compare traffic and conversions with those of the old version of the site.
Note that there are free tools available on the internet, such as Google's PageSpeed Insights to measure the loading speed of pages.
The last step of the CMS migration procedure is to shut down the old site, once the new pages are indexed. The old addresses, however, must keep redirecting to the new ones: leave the redirects in place, and keep the old domain name active if it changes.
In conclusion, several factors can lead a company to migrate its website, such as improving marketing, increasing traffic or becoming responsive. But only a carefully executed process can prevent the loss of indexing or data, or the appearance of duplicate content. Indeed, a bad migration could be fatal to the SEO of a site selling products or services.
Turn the complexity of a CMS change into a simple, structured process. Swan offers you a complete and intuitive solution, making the process transparent and efficient.
Migrating with the Magento CMS
If you have chosen to migrate to Magento, the difficulty lies in the fact that every website is unique: no two migrations are alike. A sound working method and a team of experts are therefore often necessary to make the process a success.
The first thing to do during a migration with the Magento CMS is to list the extensions of the current site. This operation will sort the extensions that are useful to your business from those that would overload Magento.
The second step of the migration with the Magento CMS is custom development, whose aim is to meet your company's needs in terms of SEO, or to improve its inbound marketing in order to attract new customers. In this step, installing third-party modules can help you avoid regressions on the site.
The data migration also relies on specific tools such as Magento's Data Migration Tool, which is used to move from Magento 1 to Magento 2. A very useful tool for retrieving customers, orders and products on an e-commerce site.
Finally, regarding SEO, the strategy to adopt will depend largely on the goal to be reached, such as a good ranking in search engines like Google, the recovery of metadata or the redirection to the pages of the site.
Lastly, you will of course need to set up the redirects on your new Magento site, which is why we have prepared for you the tutorial on integrating redirects in Magento.
Seize the opportunity to reinvent your online store. Swan simplifies every step of your migration to Magento, from data transfer to the integration of redirects.
Migrating with the WordPress CMS
For a site already on WordPress that is only changing host, the migration can be done manually and without risk if certain steps are followed: they are detailed in our article on moving a WordPress site to a new host. For a site coming from another platform, see migrating an HTML site to WordPress and migrating from Wix to WordPress.
The first thing to do is to back up your site's data. To do so, simply connect to the FTP server and start the download.
The second step will be to export the database. To do this, you can for example use phpMyAdmin, the MySQL administration tool easily accessible from your hosting provider. On a Mac, you can also connect with the Sequel Ace software. Once connected, the export is done by choosing either the custom method or the quick method.
Note that a manual CMS migration from Joomla to WordPress, like a website migration from Shopify to WooCommerce, can take several days, because the content has to be converted from one CMS to the other. For a WordPress site that is only changing hosting, the next step is to create the new database at the new hosting provider, again from phpMyAdmin, then import the exported file. Next, you will need to update the wp-config.php file, in particular the database name, the username and the password.
Then comes uploading the files to the new FTP server by sending the folders to the new site.
As for updating the URL, it is useful when your old address is still present in the database. This operation is essential if the domain name changes, because WordPress stores full addresses in its database.
Finally, to check that the site works properly, use the new address to see whether any 404 errors appear. This check is made easier by using a crawler such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Windows, Mac and Linux) or Integrity for Mac.
