Tips for switching your CMS

It's understandable to feel overwhelmed when faced with the decision to switch to a new content management system (CMS) for your website.

Companies spend years populating their content management system (CMS) with endless blog entries, case studies, and service details. This fact may cause you to delay the implementation of a new CMS.

After all, when you've settled into a routine, it might be intimidating to make such a drastic shift—especially if your current approach has been successful in the past.

Considering the motivations for the change, the potential gains, and the steps you may take to ensure a seamless transition are all essential.

Consider scalability

Sometimes, in the early stages, a company would use a simple content management system to get their firm online as soon as possible.

However, as your business expands, the complexity of your website will increase as you add additional features and plugins to meet your changing needs.

Companies may hit a snag when they realise their present CMS is unable to support the ways in which they operate because of this.

If your content management system can't expand as your company does, your online presence will inevitably lag behind. Now is the moment to make a switch.

Although switching to a more future-proof and scalable CMS can be a time-consuming process, in the long run it can be far cheaper and simpler than continually adding on many plugins to a basic system.

Sustainability

Content management becomes more difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone when complicated capabilities are added to a CMS that were not designed for it.

The name says it all: a CMS's purpose is to facilitate content management. It's probably time for a change if you have to go through a lot of hoops to do something as easy as adding a blog post or an image.

Weaknesses

A web content management system bloated with plugins can be a pain to maintain.

It can be quite taxing and time-consuming to keep track of which ones require updating, which ones have ceased operating, and which ones are still supported.

The content of your website can be compromised if you don't keep up with the constant maintenance that plugins require because they introduce new vulnerabilities and problems.

If you're looking to simplify management and eliminate security risks, switching to a new content management system that meets most of your company's needs is the way to go.

Painfully slow site?

If you try to make a content management system accomplish more than it was meant to, you'll wind up with a website full of thousands of lines of unnecessary code that neither your users nor you will ever need.

This can cause bloat, which in turn slows the site for the user and negatively impacts both UX and SEO, making it more difficult for your site to naturally reach the top of search engine results pages.

As a result, fewer people will visit your website and a greater percentage of those that do will quickly leave. After all, a sluggish loading time is the primary cause of a user navigating away from your site.

Web bloat can slow down the backend interface, making it difficult for anyone trying to upload new content.

What to look for in a CMS

Does it offer what you need?

The question "does this fit my needs?" is paramount while looking for a new CMS.

Most CMSes focus on one or two areas of expertise to better serve a wide range of businesses. If you need an advanced blog with plenty of SEO plug-ins and widgets, for instance, WordPress or Craft CMS are better options than Shopify.

On the other side, Shopify is an excellent choice if you want an eCommerce platform that is intuitive, inexpensive, and scalable.

Is it future-proof?

Even though a single CMS seems ideal for your needs at the moment, you should give serious consideration to how those needs may evolve in the future.

Explore the various plugins and extensions to get a feel for how you might want to develop your site in the future.

There will be some features that are far more difficult to integrate than others, and this could be a major factor in deciding to go with a different CMS.

You should give more weight to ecommerce capabilities than chatbots, for instance, when deciding on the best content management system (CMS) for your site.

Is it secure?

The more people who use a CMS, the safer it is thought to be by the general public at large. This is not always the case, though. Smaller CMS systems can greatly benefit from security through obscurity.

Apple iMacs, for instance, have a bad rep for being invulnerable to hacking, but in reality, for a long time, they only commanded a negligible share of the computer/software market, so the vast majority of hackers and malicious users weren't even aware that they existed, let alone cared to exploit them.

Because of this, a greater vulnerability that no one is aware of is preferable to a smaller weakness that can be exploited with a simple web search.

What integrations do you need?

It is crucial that the content management system you select offers user accounts for keeping track of who is making changes to what if multiple people on your staff will be contributing to the site.

In addition to allowing several users to alter the same information at the same time, a smart CMS should also provide visibility into who is making adjustments to the site.

Anything else?

When migrating your old content to a new CMS, there are a few things to keep in mind to avoid any potential hiccups.

URL formatting

Not all content management systems have the same URL format by default, so it's crucial to keep an eye on this unless you're actively modifying the URL structure of your site.

After a site is live, it's normal for search engine rankings to fluctuate; if you modify the URL structure, Google may have trouble keeping up.

Even worse for your SEO is that broken links inside your content (including internal linking) may send visitors to error pages.

Content

Depending on the old and new CMSs, migrating your content might be a simple or complex operation.

It's possible that a lot of content editing will be necessary to get it ready for the new CMS. Most CMSes will have export and import functions to ease such a transition.

Graphics The URL of an image may change depending on the CMS you use, which can have a negative impact on your site's search engine optimization and lead to a slew of other problems.

In cases like blog articles, where the photos are typically hard coded into the content, this may be an issue. There are, however, a few approaches to address this problem.

The image links in your content can be updated to the new website's structure in one of two ways: either by recreating the previous site's file structure or by running a search and replace.

Features You should be aware that the content management system you are switching to may not provide you with all the tools you currently use.

Small details are easy to overlook, and it may take some time and practice with the new procedures before you learn what parts of the toolset you haven't been using.

When should you change CMS?

Changing CMS is best done in tandem with other website updates, such as a redesign or a reorganisation. To get the most out of whatever SEO or aesthetic updates you make to your site, it's best to implement them across the board.

It will save you time and money, and it will prevent your SEO rankings from experiencing multiple hits.

Since the developer may incorporate the fresh material during the redesign and will already be familiar with the state of affairs, the whole process will go more quickly than if it were done separately.

Talk to us about Drupal

Is it time to upgrade your content management system (CMS) since you've outgrown its limitations and cannot accommodate your company's growth? Our professional web developers at Code Enigma can assist you with migrating to the latest version of Drupal and restoring your website's functionality.