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Re-Platforming to WordPress.

Most CMS websites can be re-platformed to WordPress quickly and with ease. However, there are lots of things to consider before you start.

If you have a website that was built on a bespoke system, there’s a good chance that managing it is problematic and getting development for it can become a headache in itself. Many old CMS websites just aren’t up to the job anymore and can involve having to use HTML and markup to get the results you need. Not what you need while running your business.

This is why re-platforming to WordPress is a great step in the right direction – moving your site to WordPress will make it easier to manage, improve your site, getting you ranking higher and will ultimately deliver you more traffic.

Planning your WordPress move

Before re-platforming, to WordPress, you need to check to see if there are any plugins to help with the migration. Platforms such as Joomla, Drupal or even Magento can be migrated using a WordPress plugin or third-party service to move the content over relatively quickly. Causing less of a pain point.

For older platforms or custom built platforms, there may not be this option, but it doesn’t mean you have manually cut and paste everything over. There are ways to migrate specific content areas from old sites and map them to page or post areas within WordPress. Saving you time and money.

Once you’ve found a way to migrate, the next thing to do is to look carefully through your existing content and make some decisions on whether it all needs to be re-platformed.

To help you make this decision, you’ll need to use a variety of tools to examine data:

  • Google Analytics
  • SEM Rush / MOZ or similar
  • Ahrefs

These are just a few of the tools out there that you can use, if you feel more comfortable using one you have prior knowledge of, then definitely go for that.

These tools are all great for working out key points to your site, but you will still need to interpret the data and make decisions based on it – no one tool can or will give you all the answers to your website.

Analysis complete, you’ll now have a list of items you can proceed with:

  • Pages or Post content to keep
  • Page or Post content to be condensed to new page/post content
  • A list of page/post content URLs that will be 301 redirected to other content
  • A list of keywords and search phrases that you know you currently rank for.

Once you have all of this data, then you’re ready to start re-platforming to WordPress.

One other thing to remember is to benchmark your current site against google page speed or another service similar, so you can see and prove the improvements when you’ve moved the platform.

  • Pingdom tools
  • Gtmetrix
  • Google page speed

This will give you the benchmark moving forward and highlight issues on your current site to avoid them on your new WordPress one.

Time to move to WordPress

Moving your site over to WordPress can be relatively straightforward, but there are right and wrong ways to do it. Having a WordPress Developer to help you is perfect.

We always recommend setting up a www environment to host the new install during the re-platforming to WordPress process. This way, the current live site can remain live while the new site is built. 

We also recommend that you seek out hosting which will support WordPress features that help your site run to the best of its ability. If you’re struggling to find the right hosting, get in touch our server stack is optimised for WordPress and we can help you migrate.

If the re-platform also includes a new design for the site, this too all needs to be completed and signed-off before transferring to a new WordPress build.

Growing on your new platform

Once you’ve moved your site and everything is working properly. Start to plan your growth on your new WordPress site.

Part of re-platforming to WordPress is gaining much more control over the content of your site. You’ll be able to manage much more of the content yourself, from that old rickety CMS you’ve just come from.

Having all your old ranking content on the new site is great. Now its time to think about future content of your website, premium content and what you’re going to produce.

We recommend:

  • Develop personas for the users of your site
  • Workout the top level and long-tail searches your site ranks for.
  • Identifying ranking opportunities
  • Plan and plan well.

Getting help.

Producing a great WordPress website takes time and resource. It’s important to make sure all your current content is optimised, moving forward you need more content and good quality.

Aware can help you re-platform to WordPress. Done properly by our expert team, your site and digital marketing will benefit massively. If you’d like us to give you a call to tell you more about our process and the benefits, drop us an email via our Contact page.