Web Re-design: 5 Tips to Migrate Existing Content into Kentico

 Twitter |  Facebook |  digg it |   delicious |   LinkedIn |  reddit 

Lately, many of our web re-design projects involve migrating existing content from a database into a .net content management system. I spoke with a few of our certified Kentico trainers and web developers about the best way to integrate Kentico with a back end database that contains content that needs to be migrated to a new website.

Here are five tips:

1. Prior to the migration, update your database by removing any pages that will not appear on the new website. The decision whether to include a page in the new website will be determined by the new site map. 
2. Assess the existing content and determine what document types will be needed in Kentico and create them. For example, you may want to use the document types for press releases and products and create custom ones. Generally, custom document types will have fields that match the tables in the old database.
3. Place the design templates into Kentico. Templates are created using HTML, CSS and images.
4. Write a script to automatically migrate this content into Kentico, utilizing Kentico’s API.  
5. Once the content is migrated into Kentico, you will be able to modify any of the existing copy and add new copy using the document types.