In this project, a complex, multilingual website was completely and automatically migrated from a third-party CMS to TYPO3. The website contained thousands of pages and content, but without API or direct database access, which made data migration challenging. The solution therefore consisted of a specially developed scraping approach that captured the entire website and transferred all content, hierarchies and translations to TYPO3. The migration used TYPO3 core functions to consistently map the page structure and content and ensure the most error-free data transfer possible.
Functionalities in detail
- Scraping of the entire website:
- As the external CMS did not offer an API and direct database access would not have adequately captured the data structure, the entire website was scraped using a specially developed scraping tool.
- The custom scraper saved all page content and media locally in order to create a reliable basis for further data migration.
- Creation of the sitemap and migration of the page hierarchy:
- Based on the scraped data, a sitemap was created that mapped the entire structure and hierarchy of the website.
- The page structure was imported using TYPO3 core functions to enable a native and stable display in TYPO3. All translations of the pages were also migrated, allowing the multilingual structure to be retained.
- Automated transfer of page content:
- All content of each page was analyzed and converted into TYPO3 content elements via custom scripts. Both native and custom TYPO3 content elements were used to maintain the original design and structure of the content.
- This automated process enabled the fast and consistent transfer of even large amounts of data without manual intervention.
- Migration of images and files:
- All images and files were saved locally and then imported into TYPO3. The media content was natively referenced to ensure easy maintenance and management in TYPO3.
- The media was automatically assigned to the respective content so that the visual design and user experience of the original website was retained.
- Transfer of the translations:
- The translations of all content were transferred using the same process. This ensured that the multilingual structure was fully preserved and correctly rendered in TYPO3.