There are no perfect CMS. Let’s face the truth. Each platform, even the most used one has its drawbacks. One thing worth mentioning is that each CMS issue should be considered in the spectre of multiple contexts. Like, it might be the editors/users, who lack competence in using a particular CMS, or the core problem is rather a wrong choice of CMS itself.
When all the methods and tutorials have been tried out and don’t really result in any improvement impact, CMS migration might come in handy.
In which issues CMS migration helps the most? Let’s look inside:
Not enough functionality
First and the most argumentative statement. Let’s ‘digest’ it in the beginning, since, before changing a CMS, users could simply ‘flow down a mainstream tide’ and blindly change their CMS without analyzing why a new CMS is better than their existing one. If on the contrary, what do we mean under ‘rich functionality’?
- Effortless data creation and access to it;
- Ability to ‘SEO’ the content properly and make it ‘browseable’ easily.
- The comprehensive learning curve for the novices to get acquainted with a certain CMS and ‘master’ it.
- Ability to expand default CMS functionality by installing additional plugins, extensions, etc.
CMS should expand user’s opportunities, not limit;
If your current CMS lacks in everything mentioned above, then start thinking about switching to a different platform.
Maintaining and updating
Each CMS has its price of course. Even if consider that some of them are open source (free to download and install) it doesn’t change the fact that you will need additional resources to spend for its successful launching.
Draw an approximate cost sheet for the following:
- domain and hosting;
- theme developing or premium themes;
- maintenance;
Prices here might range depending on which platform you’re using (from $10 to numbers with lots of zeroes). Note that more technical platforms require additional costs to spend for finding and hiring a highly-qualified specialist. You can observe nowadays that less technical platforms are successfully on their way to replace more complex CMSs by making the advanced options simplified and understandable for an average user.
Take for instance an update process. Some CMSs offer a ‘one-click’ update with a recommendation to update all the additional functionality safely, others require some of the technical knowledge since the global update might damage your website data and in the end, you would be urged to perform migration without even the ability to plan it properly.
Choice of CMS which doesn’t go along with your business aims;
Consider that you’ve chosen a particular CMS then, but now you see that there isn’t a real outcome. It’s important to determine at the beginning what kind of activity you’re planning to do and think of the resources and functionality needed to be included in a CMS you’re going to choose. Decide if you want a profitable blog or an e-commerce store or perhaps you’re up to a large corporate website? Or perhaps the combination of everything? The more content platform is, the fewer unnecessary moves you make and fewer resources are spent.
Which platforms are fated to rock this year? Check out Trending in CMS: Where to Move in 2017? [Provocative Analysis].
Migration itself
When there is a boiling point at which you decide that your current CMS platform should be changed there comes another question: how to do this, which means to use? Outline the most important content to transfer for you first and decide how you would like it to look on a new website.
The next step is selecting a method with the help of which you’re going to perform the content transfer. You might do it manually or automatically. Each method has its pros and cons so we recommend to read what is the real difference between manual and automated content migration and decide how would you like to move to another platform.
aisite is an automated CMS/ forum migration service, where you’re able to choose among a plenty of platforms and perform the migration quickly and neatly. Launching Free Demo Migration allows you to see the transfer results first before moving to a different CMS.
After the transfer, it’s important to test out how your new website is doing and start to manage it correctly. The important thing is to not afraid of the changes.
Ready to make migration? A practical migration guide would gladly provide you with tips on how to run through the switch process slightly.
