There is a lot of work involved in redeveloping and relaunching an intranet or website. The project management challenges start early, and it is easy to overlook the time (and effort) needed to migrate the content from the old to the new site.

Yet, for its lack of visibility, content migration is often the single biggest activity in a web redevelopment. Certainly it is the least interesting, and unfortunately unavoidable.

This article explores a number of options for the migrating content, and provides some practical suggestions that should help it to go smoothly.

Redeveloping a site

Two factors often drive the redevelopment of a website or intranet:

• Moving to a new technology platform, such as a new content management system (CMS) or portal package.
• Redesigning the site, either to address the weaknesses in the current site or to add significant functionality.

Often these two factors are bundled together, with a technology selection process combined with a redesign.

In either case, there is a need to migrate the content from the old site to the new site. This is not a simple process.

A change in technology platforms makes the migration challenging, as does a major restructure or redesign of the site.

Unfortunately, there is no option for avoiding the migration, and careful planning will be required to get the best outcome.

[July KM Column, read the full article]