OK, so you’ve made it through the planning stage of your content migration. Congratulations.
But now you are faced with your biggest challenge – finishing!
Content migrations can be tedious, with lots of little things cropping up, the possibility of unplanned surprises at every turn. Needless to say, documentation of your decisions is useful – especially if you are on a very large project that is going to go a long time.
Have a think about your schedule. What order are you going to migrate all of those pages? My advice is to get the high traffic pages out of the way first. This gives you a little more time to iron out any kinks in the layout and presentation (if that’s your responsibility), and to make sure you are able to quality assure (QA) the pages properly.
Did you decide whether you’ll be reviewing your content at the same time? If so, make sure you have agreement from the content owners of the level of approval they require for any re-worked pages. There’s nothing worse than having your deadlines at the mercy of a manager who takes their time approving your work. Have a back-up plan, or simply make it clear that you will progress without their approval – you simply won’t migrate their content.
It’s also important to pull together a style guide (if you don’t already have one). As I’ve mentioned before, consistency in your content is vital. If you are lucky enough to have a team of people doing the migration, a style guide is even more important. It’s amazing how everyone has their own way of doing things, from file naming to punctuation, linking, and layout.
Next post I’m going to finish of this little series with the count down to go live. In the mean time, check out Column Two, a blog by Step Two Designs. They have a lot of good things to say about content management and knowledge management. I’ve been to one of their courses before, and find they offer some really good advice about a range of intranet related topics.
