Service Employees International Union
PROJECT TYPE
Website Migration / Re-design
STATUS
Done
INDUSTRY
Non-profit
Introduction
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of the largest labor unions in North America, representing roughly 2 million workers across healthcare, property services, the public sector, childcare, higher education, airports, and
security. United by the belief in the dignity and worth of workers and the services they provide, SEIU organizes and bargains on behalf of its members to improve their lives and the well-being of their families, with a focus on lifting standards
for workers in historically lower-wage and marginalized roles.
What needed to be done?
SEIU reached out to migrate their website from CraftCMS to WordPress. The goal was to unlock greater flexibility and usability while giving their internal team real autonomy over day-to-day site updates. Just as importantly, the migration needed
to preserve everything they had already built up over the years, including their SEO standings, Google Analytics history, and url structure, so the move to a new platform would not cost them any of the ground they had earned. The new site also had to carry over their full content library, complex custom content types, and integrations in addition to a redesign of specific high traffic pages.
Challenges
- The first challenge was due to the sheer volume and complexity of the content. We had to port and validate 2,500+ content
entries from CraftCMS into WordPress, two completely different content management systems with very different ways of modeling and storing data. A migration of that size, done by hand, would have been slow and error-prone, and any mistakes could have quietly broken pages or lost content. - We also had to figure out an efficient way to transfer the existing pages and page styles into WordPress without rebuilding each one from scratch. CraftCMS and WordPress handle page layout and styling very differently, so we needed an approach that respected the original look and feel while still giving SEIU's team an easy way to manage pages going forward.
Solutions
- To tackle the content migration, we developed multiple scripts to collect data out of CraftCMS and programmatically insert it into the WordPress platform. This let us move 2,500+ entries and 45 pages of content accurately and at speed, rather than relying on tedious manual entry. Once the data was in place, our team worked collaboratively to spot-check content post-deployment, verifying that entries, custom content types, and page details came across cleanly.
- For the page and styling challenge, we identified LiveCanvas as the best page-editing plugin for WordPress. LiveCanvas allowed us to manage HTML and styles directly, which was exactly what we needed to faithfully carry over the existing designs, while still providing a WYSIWYG interface so SEIU's team could comfortably manage pages on their own after launch. This struck the balance between precise control during migration and approachable, sustainable editing afterward.
Development Process
We built the new platform on WordPress, using LiveCanvas for page layout and styling and a scripted, repeatable migration pipeline to move content over in batches. Working in close communication with SEIU, we migrated content, validated it, and layered in additional features including an interactive local-union map, AWS S3 asset integration, and third-party forms. Throughout, we kept a careful eye on SEO, analytics continuity, and url mapping so that the transition would be seamless from the perspective of both members and search engines.
Client Result
We successfully migrated SEIU from CraftCMS to WordPress, bringing over 45 pages and 2,500+ content entries along with their custom content types, select newly designed pages and integrations, all while preserving their SEO rankings, Google Analytics
history, and url structure. Just as valuable as the migration itself, SEIU's team came away with a modern, flexible platform and the autonomy to manage their own site day-to-day through an approachable editing experience, giving them a
sustainable foundation to build on going forward.
Technologies Used
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Psiware