Website Migration Addresses Hurdles Large and Small – Case Study
Becker Professional Education, a subsidiary of DeVry Inc., was undergoing major re-branding and positioning of its offerings. They faced several website dilemmas. The professional services education company offers exam review programs to help professionals prepare for certifications in accounting, finance as well as providing continuing education. Each of these focused offerings was featured within one of four independent websites, BeckerCPE.com, BeckerCPA.com, BeckerPM.com and Stalla.com. The company intended to bring them all under one website, Becker.com.
Serena Collage Goes Terminal
At the same time, the content management system on which the BeckerCPA.com website was operating, Serena Collage, was approaching its technology end-of-life. Although the content management system was performing suitably, Serena, had announced there would be no further upgrades and support would be ending for its Collage web content management system (CMS). Although there was no imminent urgency, the prudent path for Becker, as well as all Serena Collage customers, was to make plans to replace Collage with a suitable CMS alternative.
Choosing a Replacement Content Management System
The first task was to identify a content management system that could not only replace the feature set of Collage but also accommodate the unique needs of the business units being integrated into the website. Together with Becker, Duo selected Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server CMS. Cascade Server offered two immediate benefits. Cascade Server’s architecture and publishing model is very similar to that of Collage. Replacing Collage with Cascade Server requires only a modest amount of retraining for site administrators. And in ways that it does differ, Cascade Server is easier to navigate for making site changes.
Migrating Content
The second non-trivial task was migrating the content from different sites with different or non-existent CMS into Cascade Server. To facilitate this migration, Duo customized Hannon Hill’s script for automating the migration of Collage’s “Contribution Types” into Cascade Server’s “Asset Factories” as well as WYSIWYG to WYSIWYG.
More Considerations
A project of this magnitude is littered with details. The BeckerCPA website is integrated with LearnLive, a separate course management system and a script drives the daily data refresh. Duo also acknowledged the legacy value of the old website pages. Important landing pages from the old website were mapped and redirected to similarly relevant pages of the new website.
As companies continue to upgrade and revise their nth generation websites, the task of migrating old sites to the new is becoming increasingly complex. Developing a plan of action and including the migration effort into the scope of the project are essential considerations to achieve a successful outcome.
