M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust
From WordPress to Wow: Strategic CMS Migration & Support
The transition from WordPress to Craft CMS represented a strategic upgrade for the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. After a recommendation from their Director of Technology and Information Management (with whom we had previously collaborated), we embarked on this migration to address their need for more responsive development and customization options. The journey delivered significant results: the Trust now enjoys a more logically organized content structure that empowers their team to efficiently add and modify content. The new Craft foundation also allows for custom page layouts that require minimal developer intervention, putting more control in the hands of the Trust's content administrators.
Technical Transformation: Building a Stronger Foundation
The migration process presented unique challenges that required meticulous attention to detail. We tackled the complex web of WordPress plugins, disentangling spaghetti code to create a cleaner, more maintainable structure. The project involved migrating an active blog with hundreds of posts and transferring thousands of media files including images and PDFs. Throughout this technical transformation, we maintained site functionality while implementing a more logical content organization system that would serve the Trust's needs both immediately and well into the future.
Digital Heritage Preservation: Migration Without Disruption
The scale of content migration was substantial – approximately 80 site pages, over 700 blog posts, and countless media files needed to make the journey to the new platform intact. Our approach was methodical: we exported WordPress content via an RSS feed saved as an XML file for clean importing, while newer posts were intentionally left for the Trust team to migrate as part of their Craft CMS training. For specialized sections like their grants data tables, we worked with exported CSV files, cleaning and formatting them for seamless import.
Throughout the process, maintaining SEO value was paramount – we preserved URL structures where possible, implemented necessary redirects through Craft's Retour plugin, imported existing WordPress SEO data, and conducted thorough testing to verify that search engine optimization remained intact across the migrated site.
Administrator Experience Reimagined
We designed the new Craft CMS implementation with content administrators at the forefront. By organizing site sections into equivalent entry sections and implementing intuitive blog categories, we created a system that feels natural and accessible. Leveraging Craft's "structure" section feature, we established a logical hierarchy for non-blog content that allows administrators to visualize exactly how pages relate to one another in the site architecture.
The results speak for themselves: content teams can now easily see and adjust page hierarchies, quickly reorder content as needed, and even handle 99% of redirects independently without developer assistance. To ensure a smooth transition, we provided a comprehensive online user guide that's regularly updated with new features, complemented by our ongoing availability for questions and support.
Digital Partnership: Long-term Strategic Support
Our relationship with the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust extends beyond the initial migration through a comprehensive monthly retainer. This arrangement covers everything from regular CMS updates and bug fixes to support inquiries and the development of new features. When a custom page unexpectedly lost its styling, our team resolved the issue quickly and with minimal friction.
For their milestone 50th anniversary, we collaborated with their design firm to build a fully Craft-manageable custom page within just a couple of weeks, including reviews and revisions. Our responsive service model, with an SLA that prioritizes immediate action on issues, provides the Trust with peace of mind knowing that site problems will be addressed promptly. This support structure empowers their team to focus on content creation while we handle the technical underpinnings, creating a foundation for future improvements such as the potential refactoring of resource-intensive pages and expanding the range of editable content.
