One of the first steps in our migration process is to evaluate the content that we have and generate a kind of "content inventory". The inventory is meant to provide answers several questions:

  1. What is the content, and where is it (what server, where is it physically located?)

    What's most important at this point in the project is to have an accurate list of existing web sites.

    We start by generating a list of folders on each of the servers which host our web content. This is the most definite way to determine what type of content we are serving on the Web. In our case, we use a fairly flat information architecture: most top-level folders in our site represent a single sub-site. So, the list of top-level folders makes a pretty accurate list of existing web sites. There are some exceptions to this though, so sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to generate the list.


  2. Who does the content belong to? Who is the owner, and who are the editors?

    A content owner is the manager or designee that is, in the end, responsible for the accuracy and timeliness of the content on their web site. A content editor is the person tasked by the content owner with performing web site updates. Both content owners' and content editors' responsibilities derive from the chain-of-command: content owners are typically managers designated by a vice president or other executive, and content editors are designated by content owners. In some cases, the same person is both the content owner and content editor.

    Each site in our list is assigned one content owner and one content editor.


  3. Does the page exist in our web content management system? If so, will we migrate it?

    Our content inventory encompasses web sites that exist both inside Collage and outside of it. In some cases, programs and organizations don't use Collage for publishing their web sites. For the purposes of migration, if it exists in Collage, we'll also need to determine if we'll migrate it. This depends on the content owner's approval, as well as the accuracy and timeliness of the current content.

     
  4. Is the web site "special" in some way? Does this web site use special WCM components, or represents an edge case use of the University template? If not, which template should it use?

    If a web site is using Collage components, or is using a special (custom) template, we can identify it here and use the information to prioritize the migration phase. If the web site is not unusual and uses a standard University template, we also mark the content with a template number; this number maps to the template descriptions we will provide to OmniUpdate for creation of the new site templates.


  5. When will the site be migrated into the new system?

    As mentioned before, there's too much content to safely migrate all-at-once. So, based on the principles of prioritization previously defined, we will assign each web site to one of several migration phases.
The inventory also has rooms for notes and other information to help describe content and issues concerning its migration.