Migration and rescue
The content is the easy part. The URLs are the asset.
What this is
Moving a live site without losing what it earned.
A site that has been running for years is carrying something that cannot be rebuilt: a set of addresses other people have linked to, search engines have indexed, and readers have bookmarked. Most migrations treat that as cleanup. It is the actual deliverable, and losing it is the most common way a redesign makes a business smaller.
So a migration is planned backwards from the redirect map. Every URL that currently exists is enumerated, mapped to where it now lives, and then checked against the live site rather than assumed, a redirect map that has not been tested is a hypothesis. Content moves with its structure intact where possible and is reshaped deliberately where not.
The cutover itself is the other half, and it is the half that goes wrong at midnight. DNS, certificates and mail are usually owned by three different people, none of whom knew about the migration; a certificate that lapses on cutover can take a company’s email down while the website looks perfect. We plan that sequence in writing, with a rollback, before anything moves.
What’s involved
- URL and content audit
- Everything that exists, what it is worth, and what can be retired deliberately rather than by accident.
- Content migration
- Moving the archive into a structured model, including the parts the old system stored as unstructured text.
- Verified redirect map
- Written, then checked against the live site. Not generated and hoped for.
- Cutover plan
- DNS, certificates and mail, sequenced in writing with a rollback and a named owner for each step.
How it usually goes
- 01Enumerate
- Every URL and every content type currently in the system.
- 02Map
- Old to new, with the retirements listed explicitly.
- 03Migrate and verify
- Content moved, redirects tested against the live site.
- 04Cut over
- On a written runbook, at a time chosen for low traffic, with a way back.
What we won’t do
- We will not migrate without an inventory. "We will fix the links afterwards" is how archives get lost.
- We will not cut DNS over on a Friday afternoon.
- We will not delete an archive because it is inconvenient to move.
Where we’ve done it
- Business Report
An independent Kenyan business publication, rebuilt as a server-rendered newsroom its editors run themselves.
- Khendo FM
A radio station whose website is part of the transmission rather than a poster for it.
- COFEK
A rebuild of cofek.africa for the country’s consumer watchdog, an organisation whose credibility is the product.
Next
If this is the shape of your problem, describe the part that breaks if it isn’t right.
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