WordPress now powers more than a third of the Internet, which is due in large part to the fact that WordPress is open-source and allows for customization, flexibility, and easy integration with a variety of technologies. This extensibility makes the CMS an appealing choice for everything from personal blogs to the digital requirements of large enterprises.

Just like any piece of software, however, WordPress sites do need to be actively optimized and maintained. The combination of WordPress and WP Engine allows developers and agencies to focus on content creation and revenue gains without worrying about tedious tasks associated with workflow optimization, maintenance, and performance.

Adobe Business Catalyst End of Development

Adobe Business Catalyst, an all-in-one hosted Content Management System (CMS) created in 2008 for digital agencies and business owners, announced its end-of-life for March 2021. That means existing Business Catalyst customers will need to find a new solution for their sites before their data is deleted on that date. And already, no new features are being developed on Business Catalyst. Due in large part to WP Engine’s extensive ecosystem of digital agency partners, Adobe has named WP Engine as a recommended partner for transitioning customers away from Adobe Business Catalyst.

Why Moving to WordPress is the Right Choice: A Feature Parity

There are dozens of options for CMSs out there each with its own benefits and challenges which makes the prospect of selecting one more difficult. Some typically applied criteria used to select as CMS include fast time-to-market, availability of developers, great security, superior SEO-capabilities, mobile/responsive and Web App functionality, among others.

WordPress is a content-first CMS. That means, at its core, it’s a CMS for publishers and business owners. WordPress powers more than 34% of the Internet, and its wide usage has resulted in a vibrant community that generously supplies resources, documentation, plugins, themes, and access to developers.

Right out of the box, WordPress is not equipped with managed hosting or the various Business Catalyst features that made ABC an all-in-one solution. By utilizing WP Engine’s Digital Experience Platform and by extending the platform with trusted plugins and themes, WordPress can match almost all the features beloved by Business Catalyst users and in most cases extend them to be more powerful, flexible, secure, and easy to use.

Below, we’ve mapped out some of the most common needs from an Adobe Business Catalyst customer and matched them to native WordPress features and WP Engine capabilities.

Ready, Set, Migrate

WP Engine is committed to making the transition from Adobe Business Catalyst to WordPress and WP Engine as easy as possible. However, the migration process between the two CMSs is complex. There are two primary reasons for this. First, because of the way data is structured in each CMS, it isn’t possible to move that data between the two platforms without complex logic. Second, the theme or presentation of the site requires porting between two different templating languages.

While manual migration is always an option, WP Engine has partnered with WordHerd, a professional website migration company, that has mastered the process and has tools that drastically reduce the time and stress of doing it yourself. The experts at WordHerd have years of experience with complex migrations with Adobe Business Catalyst websites and ensure no step is ignored during the process. To begin the migration process with WordHerd, get a free proposal here.

For those who want to complete the process of manual migration, we’ve compiled a checklist based on the migration of major aspects of your site: pages, posts, products, customers and secure zones, and web apps. Don’t wait, start your migration now.

Page Migration

Ensure content is valid HTML before migration, sanitize and remove any extraneous code.

Update all hyperlinks to relative paths within the WordPress environment.

Download and import media to the WordPress media library, update paths to WordPress equivalents.

Download, import, and set a featured image in each page.

Maintain hierarchies (parent/child).

Generate redirects for any URLs that might have changed from their original.

Maintain SEO meta titles and description.

Maintain SEO schema within the HTML elements used on the website.

Post Migration

Ensure content is valid HTML before migration, sanitize and remove any extraneous code.

Create and assign categories.

Create user accounts in WordPress for associated authors, assign to relevant posts.  

To ensure accurate archiving, set post dates and times to match the originals.

Set appropriate publish status (Draft, Published, Private, etc.).

Update all hyperlinks to relative paths within the WordPress environment.

Download and import media to the WordPress media library, update paths to WordPress equivalents.

Download, import, and set the featured image for each post.

Generate redirects for any URLs that might have changed from the original.

Maintain SEO meta titles and descriptions.

Maintain SEO schema within the HTML elements used on the website.

Product Migration

Ensure product description is valid HTML before migration, sanitize and remove any extraneous code.

Maintain all product attributes (price, stock, weight, dimensions, etc.).

Maintain up-sell and cross-sell products.

Maintain all product variations and adjust pricing when applicable

Create and assign categories.

Download and import media to the WordPress media library, update paths to WordPress equivalents.

Download, import, and set a featured image in each product and variation.

Generate redirects for any URLs that might have changed from the original.

Maintain SEO meta titles and descriptions.

Maintain SEO schema within HTML elements used on the website.

Customers and/or Secure Zones Migration

Migrate all customers to WordPress users.

If customers are associated with secure zones, create specific WordPress roles to match.

Use Restrict Content Pro to protect secure zone content and allow only certain user roles to access it.

Implement registration and login for new and existing secure zone users.

Web Apps Migration

Web apps are the most complex features to migrate from Adobe Business Catalyst to WordPress because they require custom functionality that is not otherwise available and therefore transferable from Adobe Business Catalyst. Adobe Business Catalyst contains a built-in web app module as opposed to WordPress, where web app functionality is created via custom post types.

Below is an example of the steps you would take to create a replica of a commonly used web app – an FAQ:

Create a custom post type (CPT) in WordPress called FAQ.  

Create any associated taxonomies, if any, that were present in Adobe Business Catalyst. For example, you may group FAQs into certain categories based on topic. In this situation, you would want to create a Topics taxonomy and associate it with your FAQ CPT.

Once your CPT and taxonomies are in place you can then begin migrating your content, which may include:

    • Migrating all content while ensuring it is valid HTML, plus sanitizing and removing extraneous code.
    • Create and associate “Topics” to the new taxonomy.
    • Update all hyperlinks to relative paths within the new WordPress environment.
    • Import all media to the media library and update paths to WordPress equivalents.
    • Set post dates and times to match the originals, which will ensure that archiving is done properly.
    • Generate redirects for any URLs that may have changed from the original.

Additional Considerations

Menus: Create and set related pages and posts to menus.

Web Forms: Create web forms in plugins such as Gravity Forms and replace in corresponding pages.

Tables: We suggest creating tables in a more maintainable way. In order to do this, we migrate table data to TablePress. This allows content editors of any skill level to easily make copy updates in tables.

Page Templates: If you use page templates in Adobe Business Catalyst and you want to maintain the same design, you can recreate the templates in WordPress and assign them to match existing page relationships.

Photo Galleries: There are a number of photo gallery plugins that you can migrate your gallery images to. However, WordHerd recommends using built-in WordPress functionality whenever possible.

Advanced Custom Fields (ACF): If your pages or custom post types require additional data, WordHerd recommends using ACF. In order to do so, you will need to create all fields, associate them with the corresponding post type and then migrate the data.

Visual Builders: If you plan on using a visual builder in WordPress, you will need to recreate the layout of each page and place content in its associated location.

These steps are a great guide for migrating from Adobe Business Catalyst to WordPress yourself. However, as you can see, there are many details that can easily be overlooked and/or simply take a lot of time. If you’re looking to migrate from Adobe Business Catalyst to WordPress in an automated fashion, WP Engine recommends WordHerd. Get a free proposal from WordHerd here.

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS for a reason, it offers more possibilities to help your business grow. With the end of life Adobe Business Catalyst announcement there’s no better time to move your site than now.

For more information about WP Engine and the Business Catalyst migration program, please visit our landing page where you can learn more about the program as well as listen to a webinar that shares a lot more helpful details about the process.