While we’re big proponents of continual upkeep for your technology infrastructure, sometimes you need a big lift to propel an aging infrastructure into the modern era. And we’re so proud to share that we’ve done it again- this time for a major state government agency.
The South Dakota Department of Transportation (SDDOT) used a vendor-hosted, custom CMS system. The previous hosting provider’s contract was at the end of its life, and SDDOT needed a technology partner to help them migrate 1500+ unique pages worth of content onto a modern CMS system. The client chose Umbraco as their target platform.
We were given access to raw SQL dumps of the existing CMS. Our team analyzed the structure of the site content from the various SQL Server Tables and developed a strategy for migrating that content to Umbraco:
- Export the SQL tables as JSON, ensuring no data truncation.
- Convert the UTF-16 encoded data to UTF-8 for ease of use in Python
- Create custom Python command line tools that read the JSON files and make REST API calls to Umbraco
- Move one page at a time or one site section at a time
- Supports pages, contacts, media, menus, and other CMS model types.
- Use these tools to move data to a new Umbraco instance incrementally.
- In parallel, we designed and developed Umbraco templates, partial views, and document types to support the site.
- In cooperation with the SD Bureau of Information Technology, we set up Umbraco staging and production instances on Azure.
- Developed custom software for integrating Azure Entra for authorization, search, and outbound email.
- Implemented GitHub actions for deployment of new custom code
We were given an aggressive timeline of only two and half months from the start of primary development to a drop-dead go-live date. Furthermore, our initial estimate was for only 600 pages, however the actual amount of content moved included more than 1500 pages.
We launched the site several weeks early and on budget.
Check it out: https://dot.sd.gov/