Moving to Drupal: Plan, Migrate, Relax!

A presentation given at North West Drupal Camp 2012 which discusses what you need to do before moving your site to Drupal. Covers content migration, risks, ideas, pointers and some examples.

Transcript

1. Moving to Drupal > Plan, Migrate, Relax! Steve Gale CTI Digital Friday, 30 November 12
2. About CTI Digital Founded in 2003 Owned and run by Nick Rhind 35 permanent staff, mainly development staff Drupal a core offering since 2004 Strong Agency relationship Friday, 30 November 12
3. About Steve Solutions Architect & Director at CTI Digital @cybermag linkedin.com/in/steviegale Former developer Background in bespoke solutions Worked with Drupal for 2+ years Friday, 30 November 12
4. What we’ll talk about Moving to Drupal Migration Architecture Risks Examples 6 Top Tips Friday, 30 November 12
5. Moving to Drupal: Why do it? Friday, 30 November 12
6. Moving to Drupal: Why Well supported Good Track record Extensible API Scalable Vibrant Community Its free Friday, 30 November 12
7. Moving to Drupal: Why Great User Management Wide array of available modules Higher traffic Outgrown current platform Need more extensive features Friday, 30 November 12
8. Moving to Drupal: Before Review your current site Plan your new structure Is there a migration path already? What do you ‘REALLY’ need to take with you Friday, 30 November 12
9. Moving to Drupal: Migration Planning ahead Friday, 30 November 12
10. Migration: Planning Identify the roles Who is responsible for each task Review, Delete, Archive, Move Identify the risks Loss of data / business SEO Impact Friday, 30 November 12
11. Migration: Planning Agree what can / can’t move KISS Friday, 30 November 12
12. Migration: Planning Cleaning your data: Who are the culprits? Inline markup Embedded links Embedded server-side code Friday, 30 November 12
13. Migration: Planning Trimming your data What are you taking across What are you leaving behind What are the effects Prune your content. What is really necessary? Content Freeze Friday, 30 November 12
14. Migration: Planning Think about your structure Where will your old data fit in How does it map to the new site What additional data is now needed to fill gaps Friday, 30 November 12
15. Moving to Drupal: Migration Choosing your approach Friday, 30 November 12
16. Migration: Approach “It’s just an excel file” Friday, 30 November 12
17. Migration: Approach Is there an existing path? Drupal offers migrations from: Joomla (J to D) Wordpress (WP Migrate) Typo3 (typo3_migrate) Friday, 30 November 12
18. Migration: Approach Taking the scripted approach Spend time understanding your data No ‘catch all’ solution What will the script do Friday, 30 November 12
19. Migration: Approach Error checking Human Eye AND Script Spot check a selection of records before & after Row count Built in features: dblog, syslog (formerly: Watchdog) audit trail, debug, error log Friday, 30 November 12
20. Migration: Approach What does Drupal offer to help? Queue API Batch API Friday, 30 November 12
21. Moving to Drupal: Migration Consider the aftermath Friday, 30 November 12
22. Migration: Aftermath New content mixed with old Change in structure New URL’s How will this affect the site? Friday, 30 November 12
23. Migration: SEO Impact Poor migration can seriously harm your health / health of your client..... Friday, 30 November 12
24. Migration: SEO Impact Econsultancy 2008/9 Pre Migration traffic was peaking at 4/5k per day Post Migration traffic dipped significantly (see above) Loss of rankings Friday, 30 November 12
25. Migration: SEO Impact Loss of indexed pages 404 errors Old site still showing in Google Loss of Pagerank Months & months & months to recover Friday, 30 November 12
26. Migration: SEO Impact Communication (SEO Agency, Devs, Client) all round the same table. Know your site & understand what’s getting migrated & what isn’t.. Data almost never looks the same after migration Remember it’s not just the text on the page you have to worry about (site architecture, URLS, images, meta data, 301’s & links etc.) Friday, 30 November 12
27. Migration: SEO Impact SEO Migration Stages Discovery & Data collection Variables (what’s changing) Metrics (analytics, data, links, rankings) credit: @YoYoSE Friday, 30 November 12
28. Migration: SEO Impact SEO Migration Stages Planning & Implementation Content, Keywords, IA URL’s, Redirects credit: @YoYoSE Friday, 30 November 12
29. Migration: SEO Impact SEO Migration Stages Launch & Clean up Go-live gotcha’s Links credit: @YoYoSE Friday, 30 November 12
30. Migration: SEO Impact SEO Research & Guidance Search Engine Journal - http://goo.gl/JpBHt SEOMoz - http://goo.gl/xz6FQ SEO Gadget - http://goo.gl/RHC3u Econsultancy Story - http://goo.gl/PBRWg Friday, 30 November 12
31. Moving to Drupal: Platform Choosing the right architecture Friday, 30 November 12
32. Architecture: History Look at SEO reports: traffic stats page impressions expected / projected volumes Friday, 30 November 12
33. Architecture: On the menu Site content text & graphics Multimedia Downloads Streaming Static / Dynamic Friday, 30 November 12
34. Architecture: What if...... What happens if it goes down - impact? Failover Redundancy Traffic spikes Back ups Friday, 30 November 12
35. Architecture: Serve it well Need more than just a LAMP stack Use Nginx (ngix.org) Use Varnish (www.varnish-cache.org) Don’t skimp on provisions Memory Bandwidth Friday, 30 November 12
36. Moving to Drupal: Risk Risk Management Friday, 30 November 12
37. Risks: Common issues Underestimation Data volume, rework Time needed Cost incurred Too optimistic Friday, 30 November 12
38. Risks: Common issues No ‘catch all solution’ New content added during the migration process Duplicate content SEO Impact Friday, 30 November 12
39. Risks: Some ideas Plan your migration strategy Content Freeze if possible Trial run Friday, 30 November 12
40. Moving to Drupal: Some examples Friday, 30 November 12
41. Example: NHS PCC www.pcc-cic.org.uk/ Existing site Large volume of articles Mixed sources XML data Mysql db Friday, 30 November 12
42. Example: NHS PCC How did it go? - Good! Good data Planned & mapped Able to provide data dump in specified structure Data remained constant during migration Friday, 30 November 12
43. Example: PCG www.pcg.org.uk/cms/ index.php Existing site Large volume of articles Lots of new functionality Friday, 30 November 12
44. Example: NHS PCC How did it go? - Not so good! Poor data Content structure not fully mapped out / changing No content freeze Not enough planning Data kept changing during build. Friday, 30 November 12
45. Moving to Drupal: 6 Top Tips Friday, 30 November 12
46. 6 Top Tips Identify the roles and responsibilities for all: client, dev, PM, Sponsor Plan, Plan, Plan! Simplify as much as you can Take a staged approach Take the time to prepare the data Document what you have done! Friday, 30 November 12
47. Moving to Drupal: Any further questions? Friday, 30 November 12
48. Thank You Steve Gale s.gale@ctidigital.com @cybermag Friday, 30 November 12