Last Friday night I officially locked out edits on most of the pages mentioned in our previous post, and then Sunday night I shipped all the locked nodes off to be imported into our new site. Here’s our timeline right now:
12/4 – Site Frozen
12/6 – Database sent off to development
12/7-12/8 – Database migrated into the new site
12/9 – Initial training in the new site, and the start of the QA process
12/18 – Second training in the new site, finalize QA
Early January – Migrate the site to the campus data center
For us, one of the most intense parts of the web design process starts this upcoming Wednesday. When our content is migrated into the database, it’ll be stored close to how it is now. For each of the 2061 pages we’re migrating in, Lori and I will need to reformat them using the design components we’ve been provided, rework the content, add media, and appropriately add them to our menus.
I’ve been asked a number of times this last week when we expect things to go live, and right now the answer is: we don’t know. That will depend entirely on how quickly we can get that content work done.
The last few days last week were one the busiest periods of edits we’ve ever had. Thank you to everyone that helped squeeze those in, since they saved us from double entry!