In preparation for migrating website content from Reason to WordPress, here are a few things to be aware of that can help make the process go smoothly. Please contact Doug Bratland with questions.

Reason Site Prep

  • Clean up your content: make sure it’s accurate and up-to-date. (Your monthly Siteimprove reports can help with this!)
    • Get rid of any ROT (content that is redundant, outdated, or trivial)
  • Review your content for accessibility issues and readability.
    • Skip events and non-current news posts.
    • You don’t need to meet a specific readability score, but please fix any obvious issues. We’ll work with you if your content needs significant work.
  • Review the use of headings and bold text on your site to make sure they are used appropriately (e.g. don’t use bold in place of heading text).
  • Review the list of users with editing access and notify us about any changes.
  • Delete obsolete forms, assets, and hidden or pending pages.
    • This is an opportunity to clean up things you don’t need anymore.
    • Please DO NOT DELETE news posts or events. We will archive your Reason site before launching the WordPress version.
    • It is not necessary to delete images, unless you have multiple copies of the same image.
  • Convert any assets in MS Word or PowerPoint format to PDFs.
    • If you have shared or restricted documents, please upload them to Google Drive and delete them from your website. [More information about this change will be forthcoming.]
  • Download and save any form data that you want to preserve. Active forms will be migrated to WordPress without the data.

Training

  • Explore the WordPress 101 site anytime.
  • Stop by a Web Wednesday drop-in help session on Zoom .
  • Sign up for a group WordPress Overview session for your office or organization. Web Services will be offering these periodically throughout the academic year.

Understanding the Migration Process

  1. Web Services contacts site owners for sites that are in the queue, and asks them to identify a point person for the migration.
  2. Point people are given a heads up that their site is in the queue.
  3. Web Services performs a site audit and resolves any issues. In most cases, the site is ready for migration after this step. If more work is required, we will contact the point person and work with them on additional preparations. Our experience has shown that for most sites the demands on point people are minimal.
  4. Web Services migrates the site to WordPress and sends a link to the point person for review. At this point, the Reason site is still live and the WordPress site is still in testing mode.
  5. The Reason site is archived and preserved.
  6. With approval from the point person, the web team makes the switch so the new WordPress site is live. All links to the old Reason site are redirected to the new site.