Website Migration
for Revelwood
One site to rule them all, one site to find (them)
What happens when the platform your website is built on is “retired?” Is it possible to seamlessly migrate your site to a new platform, while keeping the same look?
That’s exactly what Rock Pixel Scissors (RPS) did for Revelwood, a software consulting firm which provides Office of Finance solutions to businesses of all sizes.
*we know what we’re doing
The Challenge
Expiring Platform and Multiple Sites
Revelwood had a website they really liked, that had been built in Adobe
Catalyst. It was launched in 2015. The company had spent years refining the
design and was happy with how it looked and mostly satisfied with how it worked.
RPS had been working on regular updates to the Adobe site. This included functionality improvements and complicated content updates due to how the site was built. Because of challenges with Catalyst, RPS also set up a separate WordPress blog site to allow the marketing team to add and manage blog content on their own—easily.
All was well until 2018, when Adobe announced that Catalyst would be shut down, and that any sites hosted with them would go offline when the platform reached end-of-life.
The Solution
Rebuild and Migrate to WordPress
Our solution was to rebuild the site in WordPress and combine it with the existing standalone blog site.
Revelwood did not want their site shutting down. RPS worked with Revelwod’s Marketing Department, and presented a solution to migrate the Adobe Catalyst site to WordPress, and to combine it with the existing standalone blog. In addition to site longevity and uptime, this migration would also address SEO, functionality, and usability.
And, because so much time had been invested in iterating the design of the Catalyst site, Revelwood wanted to keep the same look and feel when moved to a new platform. So we did.
We created a wireframe map of the existing site. This helped determine what layouts, templates, content areas, and custom post types would be needed.
We built a lean and customized theme in WordPress, and created a set of adaptable templates that would work for the site content and layout. We used the same fonts, colors, and styles in a clean and customized CSS file. We migrated the website content page by page to ensure consistency and accuracy of the existing data. RPS then imported the standalone blog, which kept the existing blog content, links, and SEO metadata intact. We mapped 301 redirects where needed in order to maintain pre-existing SEO mojo.
We trained Revelwood’s marketing staff in person once the site was ready for launch. The training included: how to make edits, add content, and manage the day to day operation of the site. This additional step allowed them to handle their most common site needs on their own. If there was a more complicated project, Revelwood could always call on RPS to handle those tasks.
The Results
Stable Site that’s Easier to Edit
Immediate Result: Zero downtime by migrating the prior revelwood.com site to a new and more usable platform.
Website traffic increased by 10% after migration due to faster page loads, better SEO, and incorporation of their legacy blog.
RPS was also able to take advantage of features and functionality available in WordPress. This allowed the ability to easily add further site enhancements, such as a custom landing page builder, CTA popups, and Customer Stories.
As a bonus, annual cost savings were realized in both web hosting and maintenance. Upkeep and hosting went from two sites to one. And after training, Revelwood, Inc. could do most of the day to day changes themselves.
What’s Next for revelwood.com?
In the time since the new website went live in late 2018 … WordPress itself went through a major upgrade to 5.0 Gutenberg. RPS is currently finishing up the process of converting the revelwood.com site to Gutenberg and to block editor while still maintaining the look and feel the client expected.