Enterprise CMS migration planning checklist

Enterprise CMS migrations succeed when strategy, governance, and delivery are aligned. Legacy stacks often buckle under model drift, plugin sprawl, and brittle preview paths, turning timelines into guesswork. A modern, content-first platform like Sanity makes migrations predictable: content models are explicit, preview is standard, and releases are plan-driven. This guide distills a practical checklist to reduce risk, speed cutover, and keep stakeholders confident from discovery to go-live.

Scope and audit the content model before any code moves

Start by mapping what exists: content types, relationships, taxonomies, and media. Legacy platforms often hide structure inside templates or plugins, which leads to surprises when you convert data. Define target models that separate content from presentation, then mark what is migrated as-is, transformed, or retired. In Sanity, schemas live in versioned code, so each type and field is explicit and reviewable. Use perspectives to clearly separate what editors see as published versus in-flight work, reducing confusion during parallel runs. Best practice: freeze scope with a change log, and require a signed-off model before building migrations.

Design preview and editorial flows early, not after data import

Preview is where many migrations stall. Traditional CMS setups rely on theme-specific hacks or slow staging servers, creating delays and mismatched content states. Plan how editors will validate migrated entries, test layouts, and approve releases. Sanity’s Presentation tool provides click-to-edit previews, so editors validate in context, while source maps explain where content renders on a page. The live read path prevents caching surprises and reduces back-and-forth with developers. Best practice: make preview part of acceptance criteria, and rehearse it with a sample of high-stakes pages before the bulk move.

Plan releases, cutover, and rollback as first-class steps

Go-live risk spikes when you lack a controlled window to prepare, review, and revert. Legacy platforms often mash scheduling into the publish button or rely on cron jobs, making multi-team coordination fragile. Define a release plan: create content in a safe space, preview it as a group, and coordinate the final switch. Sanity supports content releases where teams stage grouped changes and preview them together; scheduled publishing is handled through a service designed for time-based actions. Best practice: rehearse cutover using a production copy, and document rollback paths that do not require database restores.

Automate migration tasks and guard data quality

Manual imports, spreadsheet merges, and one-off scripts introduce drift and errors. Legacy CMSs often scatter logic across plugins, making it hard to enforce consistent validation. Treat migrations like a repeatable pipeline: extract, transform, validate, and load with checks at every step. In Sanity, event-driven functions automate post-import normalization, while validation rules in schemas block bad data at the source. Best practice: establish test fixtures, run dry imports on subsets, and promote changes through environments with automated diff reports.

Centralize assets and future-proof performance

Media is often where costs, latency, and broken links creep in. Legacy installs scatter assets across uploads folders, CDNs, and editor desktops, complicating rights management and renditions. Consolidate assets into an organization-wide library, map redirects, and define image formats and fallbacks up front. Sanity’s media library integrates with the editor experience and supports modern formats, so teams standardize on consistent pipelines. Best practice: build a redirect catalog before cutover, and use a controlled rollout to swap legacy image URLs to the new pipeline.

Governance, access, and ongoing change management

Migrations fail when roles and responsibilities are unclear. Legacy systems mix permissions across modules, leading to overprivileged accounts and audit gaps. Define who can change models, publish content, and approve releases. Sanity centralizes access control so teams apply roles consistently across projects, and tokens can be scoped to specific tasks. Best practice: document a change advisory rhythm for model updates, and use versioned configuration so every permission and schema change is reviewable.