The Brief
Just like Penrith Squash, Cumbria Squash had a problem. Their current hosting provider was shutting down at the end of the year, and they needed their website migrated to new hosting. The ask was the same as for Penrith Squash: migrate both sites to new hosting and keep the same look and feel!
The Solution
Timescales were very tight to complete this work. The task was made more difficult by the fact that the site had been developed using an uncommon technology. Any migration would have to be manual. Moreover, Cumbria Squash had substantial news archives going back many years. Those articles all needed migrated too.
The first step was to take local copy of the entire site so that we had an archive we could refer back to if required. Using that copy, we then painstakingly copied the content to the new WordPress site.
Redirects were put in place for every page, and every archive post to preserve search rankings and ensure a smooth transition. Technical support was provided so that the club could take ownership of their domain, which had been held by their previous provider. A specialised Cookie plugin was used to automatically block YouTube and Twitter content until cookies were accepted.
Because of the scale of the archives, only posts for 2022 and 2021 were originally migrated. A sweep-up task was then carried out in the new year, using the local site backup, to add archives back to January 2013. This meant the deadline of the end of December could be met.
The Completed Site
The new site was rebuilt in just under 4 days and was live by the 14th December – 2 days before the previous hosting company shut for Christmas. Success! 2 websites migrated in a total of 8 days. With thanks to the team at Cumbria Squash and Penrith Squash for being very reactive to any questions!
See the finished site below, or visit the Cumbria Squash website to see more.
Browse the Gallery
