Four websites belonging to Mount Saint Vincent University needed to be migrated from their old, unsupported CMS (OneWeb6) onto a new platform which could handle large amounts of content, and had the flexibility to meet specific administrative requirements.

This transfer included over 5000 pages and needed to happen without compromising the existing design or appearance of the websites. We needed to develop a process that would reliably ensure the integrity of each page without breaking the layout or aesthetics.

Developing custom plug-in to handle importing
In order to successfully migrate the website data from OneWeb CMS to WordPress, we first had to determine how the date needed to be mapped. We then created schematics which detailed how the data would be moved into the new system.

However, we couldn’t simply move the data over as content. We had to develop custom workflows within WordPress for the site managers, and integrate the content in a user friendly way so administrators could easily make updates to the site going forward.

Using an iterative approach, we tested our custom import plugin until we were able to move the data into custom fields that we could display on the front end of the site. Seeing how there were multiple sites, we developed the plugin in a way that it could be reused for each site. We also included debugging options which provided details on broken links and other specific details which were very helpful in the process.

User Permission Management
For a large website like this it’s common to have numerous people managing content for various departments.

We developed a custom WordPress plugin which would allow top administrators to apply permissions for users and content so that managers could only access their specific departments.

One of the noteworthy features of this permissions management plugin is the ability for content to pass down or inherit permissions, as well as being flexible enough to have custom permissions on specific pages.