Migrating Content from another CMS

Discussion:

Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500

2011-06-23 08:03:15 UTC

Morning all,

Apologies if this has been discussed previously but is there any way to import content from another CMS into Magnolia? I don't think the import feature is designed for this sort of process. Is the only way to manually create new pages from scratch? Quite an issue for us as we're considering migrating our current intranet, over 7,500 pages, from our current CMS into Magnolia.

Has anyone had any experience with this, it must be a fairly common problem.

Any advice most welcome.

Jon R

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Antti Hietala

2011-06-23 08:14:51 UTC

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Hi Jon,

I can only give a very generic answer as I have not done a migration myself. Others will comment, I'm sure.

Migration options:
Manually. For a small site (< 300 pages) a manual migration works OK. This means copy-pasting content from the old system to Magnolia CMS. Your site has 7500 pages so this is probably too big an effort.
Scripting. For a larger site you may want to write a script that reads the incoming content (preferably in XML for ease of implementation) and stores it in the Java Content Repository (JCR). The script can be written in the Groovy language for example. This is a semi-automated process that allows you to add Magnolia CMS specific metadata, such as indicating whether a page should be visible in navigation and whether a page should it be teased from a section page. A Groovy script can import content into the JCR directly.
XML import. The XML import/export feature expects the incoming XML to be in the standard JCR System View XML format. If the incoming XML is not in the correct format it needs to be translated first, for example with a script. With a script you can also identify content types in the XML, such as "articles", "products", "images", and transform them into the format Magnolia CMS can import natively.
Data module. The Data module can handle structured data such as XML and store it independent of page structure. This is a viable option for migrating non-page content such as addresses, employees, client references and such.

You can also use the Document Management System (DMS) for mass upload of non-page content. It allows you to import a complete file system in .zip format. Zip the assets and select "upload zip" from the context menu in AdminCentral. Magnolia uploads the package and extracts it to a file hierarchy.

With any of these options, it makes sense to split up the migration - don't try to do everything in one go.

--Antti

Post by Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500
Morning all,
Apologies if this has been discussed previously but is there any way to import content from another CMS into Magnolia? I don't think the import feature is designed for this sort of process. Is the only way to manually create new pages from scratch? Quite an issue for us as we're considering migrating our current intranet, over 7,500 pages, from our current CMS into Magnolia.
Has anyone had any experience with this, it must be a fairly common problem.
Any advice most welcome.
Jon R
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Will Scheidegger

2011-06-23 08:37:46 UTC

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Hi Jon

We've imported data from several CMS systems into Magnolia. Some were easy, some were hard. Chances are that you will have your data in an SQL database. We've extended the ImportHandler classes from the data module to fetch the data from these sources and build up the site tree. Depending on your legacy CMS and requirements this can be quite a task but it is definitely better than importing 7500 pages manually.

-will

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Federico Grilli

2011-06-23 09:02:35 UTC

Permalink

I would do it with Groovy scripts, no matter how the current data are stored or can be exported to (SQL, XML). I actually had to do it for quite a large website (maserati.com) which was the primary reason why I wrote OM's Groovy Shell module. With Groovy you have flexibility (can change/adapt your script on the fly without deploying anything to your servlet container and restart it) and several nice features to handle sql and xml easily. See also http://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/modules/groovy.html and http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/Groovy+Shell+Scripts.

HTH,

Federico

Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500

2011-06-23 10:59:59 UTC

Permalink

I've had no experience of using Groovy so will need to look into that, is it quite a steep learning curve to get the hang of? Our existing CMS content can be exported as xml files so I assume that any scripts would need to amend the xml tags and add code before importing to Magnolia. Is that how it works basically?

Sorry if these are low level dumb questions but it all seems quite a task at the moment.
I would do it with Groovy scripts, no matter how the current data are stored or can be exported to (SQL, XML). I actually had to do it for quite a large website (maserati.com) which was the primary reason why I wrote OM's Groovy Shell module. With Groovy you have flexibility (can change/adapt your script on the fly without deploying anything to your servlet container and restart it) and several nice features to handle sql and xml easily. See also http://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/modules/groovy.html and http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/Groovy+Shell+Scripts.

HTH,

Federico

On Jun 23, 2011, at 10:03 AM, Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500 wrote:

Morning all,

Apologies if this has been discussed previously but is there any way to import content from another CMS into Magnolia? I don't think the import feature is designed for this sort of process. Is the only way to manually create new pages from scratch? Quite an issue for us as we're considering migrating our current intranet, over 7,500 pages, from our current CMS into Magnolia.

Has anyone had any experience with this, it must be a fairly common problem.

Any advice most welcome.

Jon R

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Federico Grilli

2011-06-23 11:37:02 UTC

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Post by Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500
I've had no experience of using Groovy so will need to look into that, is it quite a steep learning curve to get the hang of?

Not at all, especially if you come from a Java background (see http://groovy.codehaus.org/Differences+from+Java). Actually Groovy can be seen as a superset of Java and you could write your scripts by using exactly the same syntax as in Java, although you would lose much of Groovy conciseness and expressiveness in that case. To get a gist of it, I would suggest you to go through their beginner's tutorial http://groovy.codehaus.org/Tutorial+1+-+Getting+started. Then you might want to look at Groovy's powerful xml support with http://groovy.codehaus.org/Reading+XML+using+Groovy%27s+XmlSlurper.

Post by Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500
Our existing CMS content can be exported as xml files so I assume that any scripts would need to amend the xml tags and add code before importing to Magnolia. Is that how it works basically?

I also started from a bunch of xml files (as well as images, videos and other assets). What my scripts did was basically importing the binaries into SimpleMedia (but of course you can use DAM, if you prefer), then extracting the relevant data from xml and finally create website pages programmatically by populating them with those data and assets. No rocket science, really =)

HTH,

Federico

Post by Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500
Sorry if these are low level dumb questions but it all seems quite a task at the moment.
I would do it with Groovy scripts, no matter how the current data are stored or can be exported to (SQL, XML). I actually had to do it for quite a large website (maserati.com) which was the primary reason why I wrote OM's Groovy Shell module. With Groovy you have flexibility (can change/adapt your script on the fly without deploying anything to your servlet container and restart it) and several nice features to handle sql and xml easily. See also http://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/modules/groovy.html and http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/Groovy+Shell+Scripts.
HTH,
Federico

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Federico Grilli

2011-06-23 15:24:51 UTC

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Post by Federico Grilli

Post by Federico Grilli
To get a gist of it,

Hm, I guess it's more correct to say "to get the hang of it" =)

Post by Federico Grilli
What my scripts did was basically importing the binaries into SimpleMedia (but of course you can use DAM, if you prefer),

Sorry, I meant the DMS module, of course.

Federico

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Rakesh Vidyadharan

2011-06-23 14:07:18 UTC

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We had a few thousand static pages (self contained directories with pages, images, css, js etc.) that we decided to import in bulk into the dms. These pages had their own design and was not designed to fit in with the rest of our site design, and existed as such on our old site. Editors continue to use DreamWeaver to update/edit these pages, and then just replace the file in the dms.

This approach will work only for a specific set of requirements. The rest of the pages on our site were driven by data from a database, that we imported into our own workspace and drive our current redesigned site off.

Rakesh

From: Jon RINGWOOD PSE 55500 <jon.ringwood-***@public.gmane.org<mailto:jon.ringwood-***@public.gmane.org>>
Reply-To: Magnolia User-List <user-list-O8DnXSz/***@public.gmane.org<mailto:user-***@magnolia-cms.com>>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:03:15 -0500
To: "user-list-O8DnXSz/***@public.gmane.org<mailto:user-list-O8DnXSz/***@public.gmane.org>" <user-list-O8DnXSz/***@public.gmane.org<mailto:user-list-O8DnXSz/***@public.gmane.org>>
Subject: [magnolia-user] Migrating Content from another CMS

Morning all,

Apologies if this has been discussed previously but is there any way to import content from another CMS into Magnolia? I don't think the import feature is designed for this sort of process. Is the only way to manually create new pages from scratch? Quite an issue for us as we're considering migrating our current intranet, over 7,500 pages, from our current CMS into Magnolia.

Has anyone had any experience with this, it must be a fairly common problem.

Any advice most welcome.

Jon R

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Sency Zacharias (via Magnolia Forums)

2012-06-26 06:54:26 UTC

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Hi All,
I have to migrate contents from one system to Magnolia based system. I have to upload images as part of this and I plan to upload into DMS. I want to do this programmatically. Can anyone pls help me with some sample code? I am not sure whether to use imaging API or something else. I am really clueless, any sample code will be really great. Thanks.

Regards,
Sency

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Unger, Richard

2012-06-28 11:20:19 UTC

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Hi Sency,

One way to do it is like this:

1. Export an image from Magnolia and take a look at the resulting XML format.
2. Create a script that reads the images from your old CMS and writes them in magnolia's XML format.
3. Then use Magnolia's XML-Import feature to import your images.

In this way you don't need to do any programming in magnolia to get your content imported.

Regards from Vienna,

Richard

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: user-list-***@magnolia-cms.com [mailto:user-list-***@magnolia-cms.com] Im Auftrag von Sency Zacharias (via Magnolia Forums)
Gesendet: Dienstag, 26. Juni 2012 08:54
An: Magnolia User List
Betreff: [magnolia-user] Re: Migrating Content from another CMS

Hi All,
I have to migrate contents from one system to Magnolia based system. I have to upload images as part of this and I plan to upload into DMS. I want to do this programmatically. Can anyone pls help me with some sample code? I am not sure whether to use imaging API or something else. I am really clueless, any sample code will be really great. Thanks.

Regards,
Sency
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