Website Content Migration

After your website architecture (departments and pages) is published from Sitebuilder, your project manager will share the website worksheet with you. Your website is now ready to populate with content. Most content will come from pages that are now out on your current website. However, it's OK to add brand new content during this process too! We will move content while scrubbing out the old styles from your old website and reformatting it using the new styles available on your new website.

Updating the migrated content on your new/staged website in SchoolNow presents a great opportunity to fast-track you and your publishers getting up to speed in the tools. With any new system comes a degree of learning. The nice thing is when you learn how to add and edit pages, you are done. There's no change in how you will do things after your website deploys. These are the same tools you will use on a daily basis to add and edit the content on your website. The more people you have available to help, the faster content migration can happen. The website worksheet that we provide (and describe below) makes it easy to delegate certain areas of the website to certain people on your team. Everyone can be working on different sections of your website simultaneously if you choose.

If you are handling content migration yourself, you will do it the same way our own migration team would (See Best Practices below for important tips from our migration team). Let’s review the steps.

Build and publish your website architecture from Sitebuilder. Don’t worry, your project manager is here to help every step of the way. Learn more
Upload your best quality imagery to position on your website. We especially want you to upload your best quality images to have available when building page content. Learn more
Watch the Basic Publisher Training webcast. This is the fastest way to show publishers how to log in and start editing simple or elaborate pages. Learn more
Migration of all content. During this step our team pulls content from your old site and puts it into your staged website. Details below
Use the website worksheet to track and manage progress. The website worksheet is what we use to jump out to pages and review them. The worksheet allows you to add notes and comments next to pages in order to communicate issues or ask questions and ultimately make as complete. Learn more

Best-practices

When you chose SchoolNow to be your new provider, you hopefully also bought into our best-practices and knowledge in creating school websites. The items below are standardized practices that we use when bringing content over from your old website and re-formatting in your new SchoolNow pages.

The overall goal is to bring the content, files, and links over to the new staged site… but LEAVE all old styles that may not be relevant in your new site design. The new site will use styles that govern the new design theme. For example, you would not see font faces, colors, or sizes anywhere, but rather Heading 1, or Heading 2 to apply a headline style for example. The font, color, and size for "Headline 1" will be defined in the higher-level CSS governing your site. This maintains consistency throughout your site. Don't worry, you'll be given the opportunity to specify all aspects of font, size, and color later in the process.
Skip the main home page and individual school home pages for now. Your project manager will assist you in identifying the key elements that you need on your school home pages. The SchoolNow design team will help you put these important pages into place
When you come to a module page (news, events, blogs, faculty/staff listings) leave these alone for now as well. Your project manager will collect and import this data that will automatically show up later. You'll know you are on a module page, because you will not see an Edit Page button in the top-left area of the page.
Regarding PDF files and links, these files must be downloaded from your live site to your desktop, and then re-uploaded into your new SchoolNow site so that the files are not physically linked back to your live site. The reason is that when the new website deploys and replaces the old one, any links back to the old site will break. Even worse, we no longer have access to download those files since the old website is gone.
Leave notes and questions on the website worksheet using the commenting function. This communication keeps all teams working on the website migration up to date.
Make sure you use the ‘Heading 1’ style first thing at the top of each page. If you need a sub-head, use Heading 2, and for a third, use Heading 3. We rarely use anything beyond an H3 headline and instead go to BOLD text if we need something else for illustrating hierarchy.
Convert text that is ALL UPPERCASE to proper case. In SchoolNow, we can control case in text via CSS and so all text should use proper case in all situations. Here’s a nice tool that will let you copy in upper case text and convert to proper case so you don’t have to re-type it.
Be consistent in your use of styles. For example, if you use buttons, use "Button Primary" across the site. You’ll find these styles in the “Styles” pull-down menu at the top of the Text Widget that you will most frequently use. If there are clearly two different kinds of buttons, you can use "Button Primary" for one type, and "Button Secondary" for the other type. The same goes for bullets on bulleted lists, table styles, etc. We want the content to look consistent across the site and we can manage this better when the styles have been applied consistently early on.
No underlined text. Underlined text suggests it’s a link. To reduce confusion, we avoid it. If the item is not a link, it should not be underlined.
If a link leaves the site or links to a document, ALWAYS set the target to launch it in a new window.
If a page that is on the website worksheet isn't able to be located on the live website, it's likely the content is new, and that content simply needs to be written. In this case, you can add text and format it right on the page, and click Publish.
Avoid displaying email addresses visibly on a page. When possible link the contact person's name to the email address or perhaps use the text Send an email and then link up the email address using the link editor.
Avoid centering content. Let it flow to the left by default. This reduces unexpected formatting when being displayed on various-sized screens and mobile devices. In general, LESS is MORE when it comes to formatting content.
Practice good file naming. No spaces, odd characters, only a single dot (.), and a three-letter suffix. See here for more info on file naming.
When dealing with source code (i.e. iframe snippets, Twitter, or Google snippets), be sure to use either the HTML Source widget… or the Script widget (for Javascript).

Additional Resources

The following are other helpful resources that aim to help make page migration easier and more efficient. We’re adding info here ongoing as new features become available and processes change to make things easier. Please check back often for links to new tools.