The migration to the new WMS is underway: we're following the roadmap to transition all impacted sites in phases.
Feeling unsure of what that means for your site? Here's a breakdown of how to prepare.
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Know what phase your site is in.
We鈥檙e migrating websites in 12 phases, determined by the features each site uses.
As the migration progresses, it's important for you to know which phase your site will be migrated in. Find out how to get this information by reading our article "Using the migration status report page."
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Prepare your site by completing the migration checklist.
To make preparing your site for migration simple, we have a handy dandy list of action items that all site managers must complete.
The migration checklist breaks down everything you need to do, before and after migration!
Tools to help you complete the checklist
As you're working through the checklist, you may want to use our to track your progress. This Excel template includes every item on the checklist in an interactive format, allowing you to mark each item as "done" and add notes.
If you have a large site and are fairly tech savvy, we have another tool you can try: downloading and running our will automatically check your site for some items on the checklist. The bot will generate a report, including a list of pages that require attention (though you'll still need to check other checklist items manually, and fix all identified issues in the WMS).
Alternatively, you can google.analytics [at] mcgill.ca (email us to request a report for your site.)
When to complete the checklist
First, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the checklist and assess how long it might take to execute. We recommend doing this assessment as soon as possible, so you can plan ahead. The amount of work will depend on your site's size, complexity, and current state, and your available resources.
You want to give yourself enough time to complete the checklist without delaying your site's migration. At the same time, you don't want to start so early that your content changes significantly before you actually migrate, and you have to run the checklist again.
In general, I suggest keeping an eye on where the migration is at, and starting the checklist when your site's phase is next in the queue. If you have a very large site and limited time to work on this, maybe start when your site's phase is two down the line (that is, if your site was in phase 10, you could start the checklist when we're migrating phase 8 sites).
Once we are ready to migrate your site, the process will move fairly quickly from the initial notification to your two week preview period to site launch. (requires VPN off campus).
You should complete the checklist before the preview period, during which you'll want to focus on fixing anything that broke in the migration (having already completed the checklist, you're likely to avoid any major issues).
Get support
Have questions? We encourage you to book a consultation with us for additional guidance in preparing for the WMS migration or undertaking other major web projects!