Set up the different environment(s) you’ll need for the migration

When migrating from Sitecore to WordPress, setting up the right migration environments is essential for a smooth transition. In general, you’ll be working with three different environments.

Development environment

Your development environment is your local or cloud-based environment where your developers will do the initial migration work (often independently before putting it all together). 

So, in your development environment, your frontend developers might begin by building a basic theme with your backend developers working on a plugin skeleton. At the same time, your migration engineers could be creating a migration plugin (if needed).

At rtCamp, we use GitHub for this.

Staging environment

This environment mirrors your actual production setup. Most WordPress hosting providers offer staging environments (either as part of hosting plans or at additional costs).

Using your staging environment, you can preview your “new” site as it will appear with WordPress, test your full WordPress stack, and complete final checks with stakeholders. 

If you’re using a managed hosting solution like WordPress VIP, this is also where code reviews happen, adding another layer of quality assurance.

When you use GitHub to write your code, it’s easy to push it to a staging (and later to a live) environment too. Github also allows for continuous integration of code as your developers write it, accelerating your dev speed considerably.

Live environment

The live environment is your final production setup!

After you’ve confirmed that everything is functioning well on the staging environment, it’s time to move to the live environment and complete the migration.

With GitHub, deploying to the live environment is straightforward. You can push your code directly to your hosting platform, ensuring a smooth transition from staging to live.