Skip to main content

The Ultimate Guide to CMS Migration with TYPO3

What is CMS Migration

CMS migration is the process of migrating your website from one content management system to another. CMS’s are the backbone of websites, and most websites we visit on a daily basis are supported by some content management solution. 

On occasion, organizations will decide to migrate their website to a new CMS that better serves their needs.

Why do Companies Migrate CMS

Companies decide to switch content management systems for a number of reasons. From scaling to a point where their original CMS is no longer capable of supporting their continued growth and expanded content libraries, to the need to pay higher licensing fees when using a proprietary CMS, or finding a content management solution that’s better suited to their industry vertical. 

As a company’s business needs evolve, finding a suitable CMS that can support them in the future is of paramount importance. Whether the migration stems from technical or strategic considerations, proper research is crucial in making the right choice in a new CMS.

What to Consider When Migrating CMS

There are several key considerations for any organization looking to migrate CMS. We’ve outlined some of the most common factors companies take into consideration when assessing their choices.

Industry-specific Performance

Content management systems aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. When assessing a CMS’s suitability for your business, it’s important to consider whether its strengths and core features align with the needs of your industry. 

For example, an e-commerce website needs to deliver visitors a seamless online purchasing experience and should have a robust SEO feature offering in order to effectively engage new potential customers and drive organic traffic to the website. 

Likewise, a public sector organization requires a CMS that can securely store and manage large amounts of data all while maintaining fast content delivery speeds to visitors. 

Consider what your priorities are, which CMS competitors are using, and assess the extent to which CMS’s you’re assessing discuss the most important features for your business. 

Scalability

In the online world, scalability is key. As your business grows,your CMS should grow with it. Content volumes gradually increase, with articles, images, and other media files taking up increasingly more space. Managing that content and delivering it quickly and reliably to visitors is of major importance.  Adding new pages to your website for new departments or brands shouldn’t be a time consuming task, or something that strains your CMS. Being able to easily search for content in the backend is also crucial to scalability. A CMS should offer robust search features that enable fast content generation that supports growth. 

Be sure to check how various CMS’s validate their ability to scale with any website. 

Organizations with global audiences require a CMS that can meet their needs. Whether it’s localization features that allow the same message to be communicated across different languages, in a unified brand experience, or a backend that accommodates different languages, ensuring that local teams can access and add content quickly and easily, simplifying workflows and improving efficiency. 

Integrations with translation services are also an important feature to consider, to ensure the accuracy and completeness of translations.

Content Delivery Speed

Otherwise known as page load time, content delivery speed is one of the most important metrics to consider when choosing a CMS. Faster load times improve visitor experience, allowing visitors to interact more easily with your content, shortening the user journey to any brand activation or call to action. 


Faster content delivery speeds also improve a website’s search engine rankings, increasing organic traffic, a crucial feature for any organization looking to grow its visibility and increase sales.

Accessibility

Ensuring websites are accessible to different audiences is key to delivering a positive user experience. Accessibility isn’t only a “nice to have” either. With new legislation mandating websites provide specific features for visitors with different needs, an accessible website is key to increasing traffic and user engagement. 

For example, the EU Accessibility Act, is an important piece of legislation that sets requirements for websites in specific industries, namely consumer facing sites and apps, to ensure they meet accessibility standards. 

Alongside frontend accessibility, a CMS that is accessible to individuals creating and managing people in the backend is also important. From having a multilingual backend setup that incorporates regional languages, to incorporating features that can make editing more straightforward for individuals with special needs, accessibility is a core tenant of any content management system.

Mobile-friendliness

With over 96% of worldwide internet users accessing the web from their mobile devices, choosing a CMS that offers mobile-friendly layout and design options is key. Ensure that your visitors receive a unified experience when visiting your site on different devices, and that your content management system of choice offers a mobile-friendly setup. 

Likewise, a mobile-friendly CMS backend also ensures that your team can easily make changes to content when they’re on-the-go and away from their office. 

Step-by-Step CMS Migration Guide: How to Migrate CMS

Step 1: Choose the Right CMS

As detailed above, there are a number of important considerations to take into account when selecting the right CMS for your organization. Assess which features and functionalities are most important for your industry, how you will handle matters such as installation and maintenance, along with training for your team members who will use the CMS to create and manage content. 

TYPO3 installations are typically done in collaboration with partner agencies, who possess extensive experience in serving end users from various industries set up and run TYPO3-based websites. They provide technical know-how to complement consulting services and maintenance for long-term support, ensuring the website will run smoothly well into the future. 

Step 2: Pre-Migration Planning

Work alongside your colleagues to plan out the migration. Decide on key milestones and processes that will ensure a smooth migration with ample oversight and cross-departmental communication. 

Who are your team’s CMS champions? The people other members of staff turn to when they need help with the CMS.

What's your training strategy? Did you deliver CMS training before or after the rollout? Did you collate feedback from staff when trailing them on the new CMS? When looking for a new CMS did you ask staff what their pain points were? These are all important questions to ask while planning the migration, ensuring responsibilities are clearly defined and stakeholders are aware of who to turn to in case of any challenges.

Step 3: Data Migration

Data migration is an important part of the wider CMS migration process that requires special attention from stakeholders. To avoid the loss of important data, ensure that existing data has been backed up beforehand and will be retrievable in case of a partial loss. Additionally, factor in a specific data migration plan to prepare for any scenario.

Step 4: Content Migration

As is the case with data migrations, when migrating content from one CMS to another, stakeholders should ensure all content has been saved before the migration takes place. This includes text, images, and other media files that are present on a website's frontend, or saved in its backend archives. 

Ensuring content compatibility is another important consideration. When transferring content, including metadata, naming formats, and brand design assets, ensure that sufficient steps have been taken to limit the risk of compatibility issues. This limits any potential errors that might arise after the migration is complete. 

Establishing workflows and assigning roles within teams handling the content migration process to conduct audits and a quality assurance of content post-migration should limit any mistakes.

Step 5: Launch!

The time has arrived. Once you’ve successfully worked through the previous steps, you’re ready to launch the website on your new CMS. 

Be sure to map out a launch process, test any integrations and third-party extensions you’ve added to the new CMS. If possible, attempt a soft launch on a temporary subdomain to ensure any errors can be spotted before the official launch takes place. 

After that, sit back and enjoy the website running on a new CMS! 

Migrate to TYPO3 CMS

TYPO3 is an open source CMS that has been delivering content management solutions to organizations from a wide range of industries. Renowned for its scalability, security, and multilingual feature, TYPO3 has been trusted by major public sector organizations, including being the CMS of choice for over 35% of the German state’s digital infrastructure. 

Additionally, TYPO3 has a long history and track record of success in supporting large scale organizations in the healthcare, higher education, and e-commerce industries. 

When selecting a CMS, TYPO3 offers a range of features that deliver its end users competitive advantages. Some of the most important ones can be found below.

Important Features of TYPO3 CMS

Built for Scale

TYPO3 is built for organizations that already have large data and content libraries, ensuring that any migration doesn’t run the risk of limiting performance. TYPO3 can support projects with over 1 million content items and robust data sets.

Robust Security Features

TYPO3 offers extensive security features, including a comprehensive user permission and access control setup that allows managers to easily control who can access specific parts of the backend. Additionally, with multi-factor authentication, secure password reset/recovery, and community-driven support, TYPO3 prioritizes security for its end users. 

Multibrand and Multilingual

From a multilingual backend that allows editors in localized teams to work in their native language, to a page localization function built into the core that ensures content items can be replicated and localized for global audiences, TYPO3’s robust multilingual features set it apart from the competition. 

Brands can also benefit from TYPO3’s pagetree architecture, allowing for multibrand management through a common backend, making it easier for teams to collaborate internally, while maintaining different brand identities for customers. 

Custom Themes

Ensure that any new website remains on-brand with TYPO3’s custom theme presets. These extensions are specially made to serve specific industry verticals in a way that reflects any company’s visual identity. 

Long-term Support

TYPO3 websites benefit from predictable update cycles and long-term support, meaning that any project running with TYPO3 can remain up-to-date and perform optimally. Long-term support also means risk reduction, with security updates being incorporated into new releases.

Open Source

As an open source CMS, TYPO3 ensures digital sovereignty and data sovereignty. That means your data belongs to you and access won’t be restricted if the website stops paying licensing fees. With a community-support based model, code is free and accessible and updates incorporate new features that benefit all users. 

Working with a TYPO3 Partner Agency

While TYPO3 websites can be set up without external support (check out our University of Vienna case study to learn about a notable example of an organization handling installation on their own), it’s generally recommended that customers work alongside an agency for their setup. 

TYPO3 Partner Agencies have years of experience supporting the digital transformation of several organizations, producing high-performing websites that attract new visitors and deliver exceptional user experiences. 

Find a Partner Agency

TYPO3 empowers the digital transformation of brands around the world. To learn more about how TYPO3 can support your organization in connecting with new audiences and in delivering content quickly and easily across digital channels, don't hesitate to contact us. 

Contact Us