When it comes to content management systems (CMS), Sitecore and Umbraco are amongst the top choices to power enterprise websites. These platforms power websites for marquee brands across the globe. But in a head-on Sitecore vs Umbraco comparison, the latter comes out on top because it’s easier to set up, use, and manage. This is why many companies migrate from Sitecore to Umbraco to avail a combination of flexibility and power that comes with the latter. So, how should businesses go about Sitecore to Umbraco migration? How can they plan the CMS replatforming process to ensure that migration is completed securely and successfully?In our experience, for the migration process to be successful, businesses must focus on three key areas: pre-migration, during, and post-migration. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
The Sitecore to Umbraco migration process can be risky: you can lose vital data, have unknown broken links on your new website, lose website SEO and search engine ranking, or fail to successfully replatform altogether. The solution? Planning.Here is a comprehensive pre-migration checklist to help you plan your Sitecore to Umbraco migration better and minimize risk.
Before beginning the Sitecore to Umbraco migration process, ensure a full local and cloud backup of your existing website to include both web root files as well as Sitecore databases. This will ensure that in case of a failed migration, you can roll back to your existing website and continue business as usual without disrupting operations and user experience.
Pre-migration, it’s critical to establish what data needs to be migrated to the new Umbraco website. For this, it’s important to run a content inventory to understand the types and volume of existing content. This can then be used to pull up high-priority pages that are critical to achieving key business goals. This process helps in more effective website migration and prepares you for altering the new website architecture to accommodate current content.
Website migration is a sensitive process, in that any slip-ups can lead to a drop in the organic traffic your new website will garner. Here, it’s important to define SEO requirements such as the URL structure, meta information, Hreflang tags, sitemaps, structured data systems and more to developers, so that your website traffic does not suffer.Also Read: How Enterprises Can Deliver True Personalization with Umbraco CMS
Investigate how your existing Sitecore website handles domain and URL redirects and create a detailed redirect plan for your new website. This plan will help you reduce the risk of creating redirect chains, and will serve as a reference for which links will change post-migration. It will also prevent your domain from being penalized by search engines.
Your new website isn’t the only location where URLs will change. Post-migration, links will also change for backlinks, paid search engine and social media campaigns, newsletters, brochures, emails, and other areas. Before executing the migration process, it’s important to list down non-site locations where URLs will need to be updated so your overall website traffic is not adversely affected.
Migration best practices dictate that migration processes must always begin in a staging environment inaccessible to the public, and not the live website. This helps developers identify and eliminate any deficiencies and optimize the performance of the production website.
How to use Umbraco Deploy for safe migration.Umbraco’s in-built cloud and on-premises deployment engine automates various elements of deploying a staging website to make the process faster and error-free.
Once you’ve prepared for the CMS migration process, it’s time to execute the actual process. Following these Sitecore to Umbraco migration steps to securely export your data from your Sitecore website and import it to your new Umbraco CMS.
The first step to beginning the actual Sitecore to Umbraco migration process is to export data from the existing Sitecore website. This can be done through the following steps.
