It’s a never-ending request for anyone who does web content management project……. how do you get the content from your old site to your new site. At first, we did it all by hand. Then we tried a couple vendors who wrote connectors to pull content from source CMS’. Neither worked all that well for anything over 7,000 artifacts. Lately we’ve had some luck with Kapow. Candace Hoeksema has a nice series going on over in our Microsoft Blog about how you make it work for Sitecore. Of course, given Kapow’s unique approach, we use it for migrations to Adobe, IBM, and other CMS’. I only quote a small part of her explanation so be sure to hit both if it’s of interest.
Kapow to Sitecore Migration: Part 1
Kapow to Sitecore Migration: Part 2
When should I consider using Kapow?
As a rule of thumb, you should consider using Kapow when you have more than 10,000 pages to migrate. However, this decision is ultimately up to the client. Costs of the software and the setup of the migration process have to be weighed against the time involved in a manual migration and the extended migration period and content freeze involved in a manual process. I should also note that Kapow isn’t necessarily just for one-time migrations. It can also be used on an ongoing basis whenever there are multiple disparate data sources. A good example of this is a monthly report with data that must be gathered from several different sources.
How is Kapow installed?
An msi is downloaded from Kapow’s site and installed. Although Kapow comes with a development database (an Apache Derby based database), we were using SQL Server, so that had to be configured. At this point, the Management Console service is started. This checks your license and allows access to Kapow’s suite of tools. Overall, a very easy install.
How do I use Kapow?
The answer to this question is that it depends what your needs are. Kapow has an extensive suite of tools. My needs on this project were limited, so I used only the Design Studio tool, and occasionally the Management Console. Design Studio is used to develop, debug, and run robots, which extract and transform content. It has a powerful interface, a little reminiscent of Visual Studio.
