What is a Website Migration Plan?

Simply put, a website migration plan is a series of steps that you or your organization will take to successfully migrate your website from one place (or format) to another. The website migration plan is the hard part – once you have the plan documented, migrating your website should be fairly simple. Some things to consider when creating your website migration plan:

• How big is your website? – How you approach your plan will depend a lot on how big your website is. Small websites will not be as intense as large websites.
• Who will be assisting with the migration? – Make sure that you have a list of all the people involved in your migration. You’ll need to know who you will be assigning tasks to and whether or not you need to notify any third parties or vendors.
• What is your migration timeline? – You will need to know when your migration will take place and how long you have to finalize changes.

Why is a Website Migration Plan Important?

A website migration plan is important because it can prevent a catastrophic failure.  A website migration plan can help you avoid embarrassing situations like missing content, missing pages, or broken inbound links. It also saves your organization time and money by making sure that tasks are done on time so that nothing must be repeated or is forgotten.

Creating a Solid Plan

According to David Hobbs of hobbsontech.com, creating a solid plan involves four different elements:

1. Relationships – This element would include things such as metadata, structured content, links, and integration with other websites. A good example of other websites your site may interact with would be places like Facebook or Twitter.  Make sure your plan includes the following:
   • Plans for redirecting old links – You could have links back to your site all over the web. Make sure your migration plan has a solid place to send all of these links. You’ll want to make sure you implement redirects appropriately. You’ll also want to contact partner sites and let them know that your links are changing and make sure they have current and correct information.
   • Plans for changing links on social media and similar websites – Make sure that your plan includes steps for changing links on your social media accounts, if applicable. Many sites today rely on traffic from social media outlets. Make sure that people can find the correct content when coming to your new website.
   • Plans for matching old pages with new pages – Nothing is more discouraging than visiting your favorite website and finding that content you’ve relied on in the past is nowhere to be found because that company did a complete overhaul of their website. Evaluate each page of your website carefully and make sure that you match old pages up to new pages so that content can be found easily. Your visitors should never find a dead link when they come to your new website.
   • Plans for notifying search engines of your changes – When your website structure changes, you’ll need to notify popular search engines such as Google and Bing of your changes. Make sure that your plan includes which sites need to be notified and how you will accomplish this task.
2. Team – This element not only includes your visitors, but also the team who will be migrating and maintaining your new website. Your plans will need to take all of these people into account. How will the changes affect them and what do they need to know to make your new website a success? Your plan should include elements for your team:
   • Who is doing what? – Make sure that each member of your team understands their role in the migration. Each team member should have a clear vision of what their responsibilities include and when tasks should be completed.
   • Third Parties – If you work with third parties, such as a marketing company or a web development company, your plan should also include their roles in your migration as well as a timeline for completion of their tasks.
   • Tools – Evaluate the tools you will be using to implement your new website. Make a list of the software you will be using as well as other technology needed for your website. If you are changing servers, you’ll need to make sure that your server technology is compatible with any software you are using. Even if you’re not making a server change, you’ll need to make sure that you have a full accounting of all the tools you’ll be using. For example, your new site might include a blog. What blog software will you be using? Blog software often requires a database. Therefore, your plan would need to include a task for database setup.
   • Pages – This portion of your plan will include your tasks for creating new pages. This part will be the most obvious as this involves the visual portion of your website migration. Your plans should include tasks to handle the following:
     • Page redirection – This portion of your plan should coincide with your plans for matching old pages with new, as well as redirecting old links.
     • Content – make sure that all important site content is implemented in the correct area for easy finding by your visitors.
     • Watch for errors – Make sure that you have a plan in place to watch the new website for errors once it is implemented.
     • Testing – Your plan should include extensive testing of your website. You should test to make sure that all aspects of the new site are functioning properly, that links work, and that images are linked properly.

What Your Plan Should Look Like

Each website is different so no two website migration plans will look alike. However, your plan should follow a basic structure for easy following:

• Overall Vision – Before you undertake a website migration, ask yourself the following:
  • Why is your organization undergoing a website migration?
  • Do you have the manpower to implement a website migration?
  • Is now a good time to complete a website migration?
  • Implementation – Your plan should include a complete actionable analysis for implementing your website migration. It should include the four elements above in detail, and each step of your plan should include details about timing and procedure. Each person responsible for undertaking a portion of the website migration plan should fully understand the scope of their duties.
  • Maintenance – Once your website migration has taken place, you will need to have a full plan on maintaining the website, watching for errors, adding new content, and checking for things that may have been missed in the implementation.

Your plan could be broken down in the following chart:

Implementing Your Plan

Once your plan is in place, it’s time to implement it. Before you dive in, you’ll want to make sure that everyone knows what their role is in the migration. Checklists can be very helpful in implementing a large change like a migration. There are several website migration checklists available online that you can format to suit your needs. Once you have implemented your plan, make sure that you have several team members ready to test the new content. It’s often helpful to have a staging area for your new website, whether you’ve moved your website to a new server or you plan for a large redesign of your website. Before making your new website live, do a full testing of internal links and images to make sure that they work. Read through your content to look for errors.

Website migrations can be a lot of work but they don’t have to be a headache. However you choose to format your plan, having a website migration plan can be the difference between embarrassment and a smoothly running website.

• HootSuite – HootSuite is the only social media tool that allows you to schedule updates for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Facebook pages. There’s no download with HootSuite so you can update anywhere. Have multiple people managing your social media efforts? You can set multiple people up as editors on HootSuite.
• TweetDeck – This sleek-looking downloadable Adobe AIR app lets you update Twitter, Facebook, and more, right from your desktop. Interractive messages help you stay active and reactive to your Twitter followers.
• Mail Chimp – Can you say free mailing list? Store up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3000 emails per month absolutely free. That’s right, I said free. And they have affordable pricing plans for those big senders out there.
• SocialOomph – Great way to keep track of your Twitter account. You can automatically follow people who follow you, send them a welcome message, unfollow them if they unfollow you and more!
• Twitalyzer – If you’re looking for a way to find out whether you’re an effective tweeter, this is the tool for you. Twitalyzer gives you a clear overview of what kind of influence your Twitter account has on the Twitterverse.

Don’t forget to let me what your favorite social media tools are. Use the comment form below!

I spend a lot of time working with WordPress. WordPress is an extremely flexible, completely free content management system. It’s also some really great blogging software too. This website was created using WordPress. I also create a lot of blogs for clients. I’ve got the WordPress “famous 5-minute install” down so well I could probably do it in my sleep. So, because I spend so much time working with WordPress, I’ve discovered a lot of really great plugins to use with WordPress. Here are some of my favorites:

1. All In One SEO – If you’re not using SEO on your blog, shame on you. This plugin makes it simple to add meta to each of your posts and your overall blog. It’s completely configurable and easy to use. Options appear right on each individual post. Download it here.

2. Akismet – This handy plugin comes bundled with your WordPress install so it couldn’t be easier to put this one into action. It’s great for keeping those horrible spam comments out of your inbox and off of your blog. The only thing that Akismet requires is an API key which you can get for free by going to www.wordpress.com. You can even get one without signing up for the free blog option. It’s easy to configure and comes with stats you can check out right in your dashboard.

3. Sociable – By and far the best sharing option for WordPress. This handy little plugin will add sharing links to all of your posts or pages but is fully configurable to go where you want it to go. If you’re a PHP whiz, you can even place it into your theme manually. It has dozens of sharing options so you can pick the sites that you care most about sharing your blog posts on. Get more details here.

4. CommentLuv – Can you feel the love? This little plugin is great for letting your readers know that you appreciate them by helping them boost traffic to their own blog. By enabling this plugin on your site, your commenters can leave behind a link back to their latest blog post. Share the love here.

5. WP-Print – Sure the name is pretty generic but this great little plugin allows you to give your readers the option to print out your articles and share the old fashioned way. Fully configurable, you can even drop your own print icon into the image directory on this plugin. Go here to download.

6. WP-Email – Don’t have a printer handy? This plugin is a great companion for WP-Print. Just as easy to use as it’s sibling, WP-Email allows your readers to email a copy of their favorite blog posts to their friends. Start the sharing here.

7. Theme Test Drive – Like to try it before you buy it? This plugin is a developers dream. This fantastic plugin allows you to try on new themes before you show them off to the world. As long as you are logged in, you see the test theme but your users still see your original theme. You can even customize which roles see the test theme. It’s great for theme development and super easy to use. And you don’t have to be a developer to use it. Start window shopping here.

These are my favorite plugins but I would love to hear which plugins you use and why you like them!

When you create a standalone cascading style sheet, keep all of your styles on their own single line. For example:

.myStyle { color: #fff; border: 1px solid #000; }

This method keeps things nice and tidy and it’s a lot easier to find what you’re looking for when you have a large stylesheet.

2. Comments are your friend.

I admit it, I’m guilty of not doing this consistently. However, confessions aside, commenting any work is important and that includes your style sheet. It cannot only save you a lot of headaches, it also saves headaches for anyone who has to do revisions on a project that you’ve completed. That way, your co-workers aren’t putting tacks in your chair while you’re at lunch.

3. Try a CSS reset.

A fresh start can be good for anyone. And your stylesheet can benefit from it as well. I have found that, by using a css reset, it eliminates a lot of those pesky bugs that you get between browsers. Not all of them, but quite a few. My favorite is Eric’s Reset Reloaded. You’ll need to adjust some of the styles for browser compatibility but the basics are still great for this one.

4. What’s in name?

Use consistent, proper naming techniques for your styles. Like comments, this makes it much easier to update your style sheet and HTML. Naming convention is great for remembering which useable styles do what. For example:

h1.red20Title: { font-size: 20px; color: #ff0000; font-weight: bold};

A style with this naming convention will help you remember what the style is for when referring to it in your HTML.

5. Try Firebug.

Even though you can only use Firebug in Firefox, it is an invaluable tool for checking errors in styles. Firebug allows you to inspect elements of the page with the click of a mouse button and Firebug tells you what styles are associated with each element. Firebug also allows you to arbitrarily change styles and HTML to see the effect that these changes would have on the appearance of the page. Firebug is every developer’s best friend.

No  matter how you decide to do your CSS, having a consistent method is a key to having a well-styled website.

I attended the AZIMA function last night with Facebook. What a great experience! I met some great new people and learned some very interesting things about Facebook and how it helps people market their brand and products. Did you know that 31% of social networking happens while users are watching TV? Or how about that users spend an average of 5 hours per week on Facebook? With more than 250 million users and growing, Facebook is a great place to concentrate your digital marketing efforts.

The great thing about Facebook is that the users are real. Facebook concentrates on making sure that profiles belong to real people. Therefore, you know that your market segment is genuine. And, using Facebook’s marketing tools, you can drill your market segment down to very specific people. So, if you wanted to find women in Connecticut that own cats and like iced tea, you’d be able to find them on Facebook.

Facebook offers two products that can help you make your social marketing experience great: Engagement Ads and Fan Pages. If you use Facebook, then you’ve seen Engagement ads. They run on the righthand side of your home page. The biggest benefit to investing in Engagement Ads is their virality. Engagement Ads have the opportunity to turn 1 impression into many impressions. How does this happen? When you structure your ads correctly, people interract with ads the same way that they interract with other content on the site. So that ad you post has the potential to be seen on millions of news feeds all across Facebook. As soon as a user takes action on that ad, it shows up in their news feed. Then, their friends take action on the same ad and their friends take action and…you see where I’m going with this. Another great thing about Engagement Ads is that they are targeted specifically at users based on information in their profile. Even their status updates are included in keyword searches for 30 days. So, essentially, you get the skinny on people’s interests direct from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Facebook offered some great tips on using Engagement Ads:

1. Use clear copy and imagery – make sure your ads are clear to people. If you’re selling them a chocolate chip cookie, then the best headline should have something to do with cookies and the image should have a cookie in it as well.
2. Ask relevant, fun questions. Use a poll! Ask users what they like on their sandwiches or how they take their coffee. Make it all about them and they will come.
3. Communicate a benefit – Tell users why it’s great to be your fan. Or just give them something free! Victoria’s Secret gave away panties to people who became their fan. Who doesn’t love free panties?

Another great marketing tool is the Fan Pages themselves. The great thing about Fan Pages is that they allow you to interract with your fans on a regular basis. The best way to do this is by publishing regular status updates to your Fan Page. When someone is a fan of your page, any status updates appear in their news feed. People view their news feed ten times more than they view a fan page, so if you want people looking at your content, you have to use that publishing option. Facebook recommends that marketers use a publishing calendar to make sure that you are posting regular updates.

The next thing to make sure you are doing on your Fan Page is to make sure you’re keeping it real. People don’t want to interract with a nameless, faceless company! In this day and age, where you can find out what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast, people expect to interract with real people.

Facebook has great analytics tools so use them. Analyze, adjust, optimize. Make sure you’re getting the most out of your ads and pages!  Here are some things you can do to get started marketing on Facebook today:

• Become a fan of Facebook marketing – www.facebook.com/marketing
• Become a fan of Facebook ads – www.facebook.com/facebookads
• Start your own facebook page here. There’s no better way to learn something than to dive in and do it yourself.
• Reach out. Find other people in social marketing and connect with them.

I am a professional web developer with nearly 10 years of experience. I am an expert in HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and more. I also am a Google Conversion University graduate. Check out the following links and resources. Thank you for visiting!

• tutsplus.com – Tutorials on everything you could possibly want to know on the web
• wordpress.org – Free Blogging Software
• stock.xchng – Free Stock Images
• bittbox.com – Tons of web and design freebies
• rssray.com – Everything you ever wanted to know about web marketing
• marketingpilgrim.com – Web Marketing at it’s best

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