Content Migration

Content migration is the structured process of moving existing content — articles, pages, media, taxonomies, users, URL history — from one platform or CMS to another while preserving editorial relationships, search equity, and accessibility. Done badly, it breaks bookmarks, kills SEO, and orphans years of editorial work.

What a real migration covers

• Content inventory: every URL, content type, taxonomy, custom field, and integration in the source platform.
• Content model mapping: how source structures translate into the destination’s data model.
• URL strategy: what each source URL becomes on the destination, with 301 redirects for everything that moves.
• Media handling: image sizes, file types, alt text preservation, and re-derivation.
• Editorial relationships: author bylines, publication dates, parent/child hierarchies, related-content connections.
• Roles and permissions: how source user accounts map onto destination roles.
• Staging strategy: dry-run migrations against a non-production environment until the editorial team signs off.

Why we scope it in Define

Migration scope is the single biggest predictor of project surprises. “Just move everything” is almost never right — most sites have legacy content that shouldn’t survive, customizations that don’t have a destination equivalent, and editorial workflows that have to be rebuilt rather than mirrored. Define answers what’s coming, what’s getting retired, and what the editorial team has to do differently after launch.