Changing CMS: Complex, But Important. What Do You Need to Consider? [5 Reading Tips]

Today, it is no longer enough to simply present products and sell them. Instead, customers expect interesting, high-quality content. Content management systems (CMS) can help with this. They are useful tools to easily and consistently create and manage content (texts, images, videos) for shop pages, social media channels or blogs. These systems can be used to manage content more productively, quickly and flexibly.

The big advantage is that CMS users do not need extensive programming knowledge to be able to put substantial content on homepages. There is a wide range of content management systems, which makes it difficult for many companies to find the right provider. Things get even more difficult when an existing CMS has to be changed. In today’s reading tips of the week, you can find out more about the possible reasons behind this, suitable systems and the best way to proceed.

Changing CMS: Reasons

Each content management system has different advantages and disadvantages. Whether it is TYPO3, Magnolia or Bloomreach: all of them basically pursue the same goal, but differ in terms of flexibility and complexity.

Here are some crucial questions that everyone should ask themselves when looking for reasons to change their CMS:

How large is the range of functions I need?
Are there any special requirements in terms of content maintenance?
How often does the provider release security updates?
Am I satisfied with the usability and design of my current CMS?

It is also always a good idea to take a look at the community, especially the developer community. Established CMS solutions such as Magnolia and TYPO3 mainly stand out because of their large community with helpful proposals for solutions. With lesser-known content management systems, it is thus more difficult to get help quickly or even to find a suitable agency.

Besides the range of features, the training period and the comfort for users, it is of course also the price that ultimately determines whether companies want to change their CMS or not.

Changing CMS: Finding the Right Provider

Once it has been evaluated which specific features the CMS needs to have, it makes sense to get an overview of the wide range of providers. It is essential to list the services of each provider and to compare them with each other.

So which provider is the right one? When comparing providers, it is particularly important to pay attention to which specific interfaces are available, whether regular updates are carried out and whether the system offers any back-up features. Only those who meticulously check and weigh things up will later have lower follow-up costs due to extensions, maintenance or implementation.

In this context, it is often advisable to cooperate with a digital agency to select a suitable CMS provider. The ongoing support and service then makes it possible to evaluate and rank a selection of CMS solutions based on various criteria, which can be classified into various categories, including the following:

Functionality
Technology
Costs
Client and project scope
Individual requirements

Together with the agency, each system that a company might consider is evaluated for each criterion. A score value then determines whether a CMS is suitable and a shortlist is created.

Changing CMS: How to Proceed

Before the migration takes place, it is always worth taking a look at useful plug-ins that make things easier. However, the time it takes to complete the migration manually (with or without a plug-in) always depends on the amount of data to be migrated.

First of all, the new content management system is set up, using a domain that only serves development purposes. It should be noted here that the domain does not appear in the results of search engines. This could otherwise be very strange for users.

Afterwards, the contents of the database of the old CMS are copied and transferred to the new system. Once this has been done, it must be checked whether and which extensions (such as comment or sharing options) are required in the new CMS.

After this step, the URLs of the »old« and the »new« website are compared. Any discrepancies would have to be resolved with redirects. Before the new CMS can go live, a search bot crawls all pages to check whether all redirects and URLs work. If this is successful as well, the new CMS can be launched.

When working with a CMS agency, for example, problems and individual requirements that are crucial for a smooth content management future are analysed so that implementation and integration are successful and holistic support can be provided.

Are you interested? You can find out more about this and other CMS trends here.