Why would I favor manual CMS migration over automated?

When you are saddled up with a CMS migration project, there are multiple ways to approach this migration. Either manual or automated. A manual website / CMS migration can be cheaper sometimes. Especially, when you’re moving a small amount of plain, simply structured content, a manual migration is the preferred option.

Taking a manual approach to your migration is possible when you have a small amount of simple content to migrate. If the scope of the project is less than 1,000 pages, manual is usually ideal. Here we explain why.

Manual Resources

In a manual website migration, you need resources to perform cut-and-paste work. You may choose to hire lesser-paid external resources. There are companies that can hook you up with students for example.

Simple Structures

Even if the number of pages is higher, manual can still be a good choice if there is no need for restructuring of the content. For instance if you’re moving between CMS templates that have a highly comparable content structure.

Directly to Production

If the production environment is already available for content uploading, and there are no changes to the templates anymore, you can choose to do the migration manually and only once: directly into the target production CMS.

Last-Minute Changes

A manual migration gives you the option to edit your content while you’re moving it. You get to see each and every page and are automatically provided with the flexibility of last-minute changes. We see lots of changes being made to metadata during a migration. 

Automate Boredom

Even if you’re migrating manually, you can still choose to automate the more “boring”, repetitive parts. This gives you more time to focus on editing and restructuring your content before go-live. Here is a new blog about all the ways to get your editors to like a website and CMS migration. 

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