It’s officially fall, and here in upstate New York that means trees are starting their annual wardrobe change into spectacular shades of gold and crimson. The days are starting to get shorter, and the honking of Canada geese migrating south for the winter reverberates in the crisp air.

Migrating geese are a wonder to behold: one can’t help but stop and marvel at the sight of dozens upon dozens of the large birds filling the sky as they fly noisily overhead in their characteristic “V” shaped formation.

Migrating websites, on the other hand, tends to inspire looks of terror and loathing!

Fortunately, site migration isn’t a seasonal activity. And really, with proper planning and execution, it doesn’t have to turn into a Halloween horror story.

There are plenty of reasons a site migration may be necessary: upgrading to a new host or platform or service, merging sites, or a new domain may require the migration of large amounts of content to a new site.

Some of the pitfalls that can plague a poorly implemented site migration include:

• — missing content
• — URL’s not redirected properly
• — losing excessive site traffic
• — improperly handled SEO

The key to avoiding these kinds of problems and achieving a successful site migration is PLANNING! It’s imperative to work with a developer who has migrated many sites, many times.

Consider what happened to our friends at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. They hired a company to migrate content from their old website to a new site, connect it with their Oracle database, and integrate their e-newsletter application. Unfortunately, when that company ran into trouble, they abandoned the project and left no documentation or information about what had been done!

Sanmita was solicited to help finish the project. Our expert team was able to pick up the pieces and complete the migration and associated integrations within the remaining schedule and budget. (Read the entire story here)

Site migration is just one of the specialized web development services Sanmita offers. Our expertise with site analysis and implementation results in smooth migrations, time and time again.

However, we can’t do anything for the geese – they’ll have to handle migration on their own!