Content Migration During Website Redesign

Content Migration During Website Redesign

Redesign is almost always accompanied by content structure changes: URL schemes, page hierarchies, field formats. Content migration during redesign differs from CMS migration in that the platform may stay the same, but data semantics change.

Content Audit Before Redesign

# Scan all site URLs
npx screaming-frog-seo-spider --crawl https://mysite.com --headless \
  --export-tabs "Crawl Overview,Internal,Response Codes" \
  --output-folder ./crawl-results

# Or via sitemap
curl https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml | grep '<loc>' | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' > urls.txt
wc -l urls.txt

For each page, record:

• URL (old and new)
• Content type
• Unique elements (videos, galleries, forms)
• SEO importance (traffic from Google Analytics)

URL Mapping

// scripts/generate-redirects.ts
// Generate redirects file based on mapping

const urlMapping: Record<string, string> = {
  '/blog/category/web-development': '/web-development',
  '/services/web-design':           '/services/design',
  '/about-us/team':                 '/team',
  '/portfolio':                     '/work',
};

// For Next.js
const redirects = Object.entries(urlMapping).map(([source, destination]) => ({
  source,
  destination,
  permanent: true,
}));

// For Nginx
const nginxRules = Object.entries(urlMapping)
  .map(([from, to]) => `rewrite ^${from}$ ${to} permanent;`)
  .join('\n');

Transforming Content Structure

Example: restructure blog with new fields:

// Was: simple post with body
// Became: post with intro + body (StreamField) + callout + related_posts

async function transformPost(oldPost: OldPost): Promise<NewPost> {
  return {
    title:      oldPost.title,
    slug:       oldPost.slug,
    intro:      extractIntro(oldPost.body), // first paragraph
    body:       convertToStreamField(oldPost.body),
    publishedAt: oldPost.date,
    author:     await findOrCreateAuthor(oldPost.authorName),
    tags:       oldPost.tags,
    seoTitle:   oldPost.seoTitle || oldPost.title,
    seoDescription: oldPost.seoDescription || extractIntro(oldPost.body, 160),
  };
}

function extractIntro(html: string, maxChars = 250): string {
  const firstParagraph = html.match(/<p[^>]*>(.*?)<\/p>/s)?.[1] ?? '';
  const text = firstParagraph.replace(/<[^>]*>/g, '');
  return text.slice(0, maxChars).trim();
}

Processing Media Files

When moving to different storage, update all URLs in content:

async function updateMediaUrls(content: string, urlMap: Map<string, string>): string {
  return content.replace(
    /https:\/\/old-domain\.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/([^\s"']+)/g,
    (match, path) => urlMap.get(path) || `https://cdn.newdomain.com/${path}`
  );
}

// Upload media files and create mapping
async function migrateMedia(oldUrls: string[]) {
  const urlMap = new Map<string, string>();
  for (const url of oldUrls) {
    const buffer = await downloadFile(url);
    const key = url.split('/uploads/')[1];
    const newUrl = await uploadToS3(buffer, key);
    urlMap.set(key, newUrl);
  }
  return urlMap;
}

Parallel Launch During Redesign

1. Content freeze — 2 weeks before final migration start
2. Migrate-and-verify — migrate data, verify key pages
3. Parallel run — staging with new design and real content
4. DNS cutover — switch during low traffic
5. Post-launch crawl — check redirects and 404s

Result Validation

# Check all old URLs return either 301 or 200
while IFS= read -r url; do
  status=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "$url")
  echo "$status $url"
done < old-urls.txt | grep -v "^301\|^200" > broken.txt

Content migration during medium site redesign (100–500 pages) — 2–4 weeks.