Stack Planning
Part of Content management systems for marketing teams
Planning content export before committing to a platform
Plan a CMS exit by checking export formats, media, relationships, locales and known omissions before signing.
Plan the exit before committing to a CMS. Request a representative export, identify what it contains and check whether someone can turn it into usable content elsewhere. A download button does not establish that media, relationships, localised versions or published pages will move intact.
List what must survive
Choose a small sample that reflects the site: an article with rich text and an image, a related item, a draft, a revised published item and any market versions the team needs to retain. Record their fields and relationships.
Include page addresses and redirect decisions in the migration plan, but do not assume an export creates a working replacement site.
Decide whether the team must keep current content, earlier versions, author attribution, approval history, media files and metadata. Some records may need archiving rather than rebuilding. Give each requirement an owner and a way to check it.
Read each product's export boundary
WordPress provides a WXR XML export through Tools → Export, with content selection and filters. Its documentation lists posts, pages, custom post types, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and users among the data represented, and documents importing that file at another WordPress site.
Treat WXR as a content-transfer input. Check separately how to obtain original media files, and site design and behaviour supplied by plugins.
For the other platforms on your shortlist, ask the vendor to document the export format, the records it omits and the route for retrieving media. Do not treat the presence of a download option as sufficient.
Export Capabilities Across CMS Platforms
- WordPress (WXR XML)Posts, pages, custom post types, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, taxonomies, users; media files not included
- Contentful (CLI)Content entries, assets, locales; requires separate handling for design and plugins
- Webflow (Site Code & CMS)Site code, CMS collections, localised content; media must be retrieved separately
Request a small retrieval exercise
Before commitment, ask the supplier or implementation team to export the sample using the proposed plan and permissions. Have someone outside that team inspect it.
Can they identify each item's fields, status, locale and linked records? Can they obtain the media itself rather than only a URL to the old service? Which required records are absent?
Map the sample to a neutral format or a proposed replacement CMS. Record transformations needed for rich text, references, slugs and media.
Rebuild one page and compare its content and relationships with the source. This is a proposed acceptance check, not a reported test.
Keep an exit record with the export method, required role, format, omissions, media retrieval route and owner. Resolve any gap that would make essential content inaccessible before treating the platform as portable.
