A Short Guide to Migrating from Sitecore to WordPress

The decision to move your website from Sitecore to WordPress might have required a lot of diligence and strategizing, but the actual migration process is even more detailed.

To make the transition seamless and successful, follow this pre-defined CMS migration process:

High-level Strategy 

Before migrating to a new CMS, it is important to figure out a roadmap to carry out the entire process effectively.

Creating a high-level strategy for migrating from Sitecore to WordPress involves the following steps:

• Think about the timeline
• Consider a website redesign
• Know which Sitecore features you need to retain
• Know which third-party integrations you need in your new CMS
• Choose your hosting infrastructure
• Pick your migration team

Content Preparation and Pre-Migration Checklist

In order to migrate from Sitecore to WordPress CMS, you should prepare a pre-migration checklist that can be followed to easily integrate all content into the new CMS:

• Backup your website: Take a complete backup of your Sitecore website.
• Take inventory of your content: Evaluate all your URLs and website content and prepare a spreadsheet for the same.
• Have a clear goal and plan: Set clear objectives as to what you want to achieve with the migration.
• Ensure SEO preservation: Monitor the current site’s architecture and its SEO elements so your rankings do not take a major hit.
• Taxonomies: Have clear labeling and categorization of all your website content so that you can seamlessly migrate it to the new CMS.

Set up WordPress Environment and Development

Here are a few things that you should consider while moving to WordPress

• WordPress Single Site or Multisite: Check whether you need the Multisite option wherein WordPress lets you have several subsites from a single WordPress installation and assign a user called ‘SuperAdmin’ who can make changes across all these sites.
• User Roles and Permissions: Choose from five levels of user roles in WordPress - Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscribers. You can define the user roles based on easy user adoption. 
• Page Template Creation: Choose from the many themes and templates WordPress has to offer for shifting your website to a more user-friendly design.
• Content Block Creation with Gutenberg: Gutenberg, a new page editor offers a block-based system to organize your content, which is more efficient than the locked-down nature of Sitecore. 
• Mapping Features with WordPress Plugins: Evaluate the features you need from your new WordPress CMS with the right plugins that offer them. 
• Mapping Sitecore Integrations with WordPress Plug-ins: You may want to stick with a few features you used on Sitecore and thus, map the WordPress plugins that offer similar functionality.

Switch & Deployment 

Prepare and export Content XML from Sitecore, and also ready your media assets for migration. Moreover, consider:

• Sitemap preparation
• Integration list preparation
• Timeline planning
• DNS switching
• Media assets migration
• Caching

Besides these considerations, also test your new WordPress site for security, user-friendliness, and SEO.

Training 

Training your workforce is as important as implementing the WordPress CMS. WordPress has many workshops and lesson plans in their learning center that you can use to train your team.

While you can use this short guide to broadly understand how to go about your migration process, you can go through our detailed step-by-step guide for comprehensive guidance on shifting your CMS from Sitecore to WordPress.