Discovery: Assessment & Planning
During the discovery phase, you need to thoroughly examine your current AEM setup and the WordPress environment you intend to transition to. You need to assess your current AEM instance’s frontend, backend, and content and see how you can move them seamlessly to WordPress.
Frontend assessment
The frontend/design assessment focuses on translating your current visual identity and frontend structure from AEM to WordPress.
Visual consistency
Visual consistency ensures that your brand’s look and feel in AEM is seamlessly carried over to WordPress, maintaining a cohesive user experience across platforms. Here’s how to go about this.
Document your current visual identity in AEM and see how it can be translated into a WordPress theme
Identify your core design and styling choices in AEM, such as layout structure, typography, and color schemes.
If you’ve been considering a redesign or design refresh, you can add it to your migration project, as your design will need to be recreated from scratch anyway on WordPress.
Once you’ve documented everything, see how design systems work in WordPress as compared to AEM.
Determine how your current AEM frontend architecture (e.g., templates, components, etc.) maps to WordPress themes
Evaluate how your AEM site design, template, and components can be translated into a WordPress theme, custom page templates, custom post types, layouts, and other WordPress design blocks.
List your current AEM site’s user interface (UI) components (e.g., buttons, forms, navigation)
Now audit your existing AEM design at a more granular level:
- Review AEM’s custom UI components and figure out how similar UI elements can be created or enhanced in WordPress.
- Identify any custom interactive design elements (e.g., sliders, animations, dynamic UI components) in AEM and explore how these can be recreated in WordPress using themes, plugins, or custom JavaScript.
- See what frontend technologies you’re using to power your AEM frontend and see how they play with WordPress.
Performance optimizations (as they relate to design)
What performance optimization techniques are you using in your current AEM setup (e.g., image optimization, lazy loading, caching), and how will these be replicated or improved in WordPress? Analyze performance optimization strategies in AEM and assess how WordPress, with plugins or custom code, can match or improve these optimizations.
Modularity
Design modularity is another thing to assess when planning a frontend migration from AEM to WordPress. So investigate how your current AEM instance ensures scalability for its design (e.g., through features like experience fragments) and determine how WordPress’s templates, layouts, and blocks can help. With WordPress’s support for modularity, you can give your content teams the freedom to try different storytelling formats by stitching together ready-to-use blocks without bothering about any technical know-how.
Content and SEO assessment
The content and SEO assessment is another crucial step in the discovery stage when preparing for an AEM to WordPress migration. This process ensures that essential content is retained and SEO performance remains intact—or even improves—after the transition. Here’s how to go about content and SEO assessment when switching.
Content inventory and audit
Start with a detailed content inventory. This involves cataloging all content assets—webpages, blog posts, downloadable files (like PDFs), images, videos, and other multimedia. The goal is to identify every piece of content and where it fits within the site’s structure.
Things to do
- Crawling the AEM site using tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to compile a list of URLs, metadata, and content details.
- Classifying content types (e.g., blogs, landing pages, product pages) and mapping them to the new WordPress structure.
- Evaluating content relevance and quality, identifying which pages should be migrated, merged, retired, or updated.
Content gap analysis and optimization opportunities
An AEM to WordPress migration is a chance to identify and address content gaps. Pages that underperformed on AEM can be reworked and optimized as part of the move.
Things to do
- Identifying content gaps where relevant topics or keywords are missing.
- Analyzing competitor content for ideas on how to improve content offerings.
- Planning for new content that can be developed and launched post-migration.
Content formatting and custom features
AEM’s content may rely on custom components that don’t have direct equivalents in WordPress. Identifying and planning for these elements is essential. (By the way, we are talking about content formats in detail under the frontend assessment and migration sections.)
Things to do
- Identifying content components like accordions, tabs, or multimedia elements used in AEM.
- Planning for equivalent WordPress features by leveraging Gutenberg blocks, custom post types, or shortcodes.
- Documenting reusable content templates to maintain design consistency.
Metadata and on-page SEO elements
On-page SEO elements like title tags, meta descriptions, headings (H1, H2, etc.), and image alt text are vital for search visibility. These elements need to be extracted, reviewed, and transferred during the migration.
Things to do
- Extracting metadata from AEM using scraping tools or CMS reports.
- Reviewing and updating metadata to align with current SEO best practices.
- Preparing metadata for bulk upload into WordPress using SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math.
URL mapping and redirection planning
Preserving URL structure is crucial for SEO continuity. If page URLs change, 301 redirects must be in place to prevent broken links and preserve SEO authority.
Things to do
- Mapping existing AEM URLs to the new WordPress URLs, ensuring logical updates to URL slugs when needed.
- Planning 301 redirects to seamlessly guide search engines and users to the correct pages.
- Documenting the redirect strategy for developers and stakeholders to reference during development.
SEO performance benchmarking
To understand how the migration impacts SEO, establish a performance baseline before the move.
Things to do
- Tracking baseline metrics like organic traffic, keyword rankings, bounce rate, and page speed.
- Using SEO tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush to capture pre-migration performance data.
- Setting benchmarks for post-migration comparison to track gains or losses in search visibility.
Backend assessment
The backend assessment involves evaluating your AEM instance’s features/functionalities, workflows, and integrations to ensure a smooth migration to WordPress while maintaining full functional parity.
Functionality assessment
Here are the key considerations when conducting an AEM functionality analysis for a migration to WordPres.
Identifying the core AEM features being used
Identify the key AEM functionalities you’re currently using (e.g., content authoring, asset management, personalization, multilingual support) to power your content channel.
For example, we’ve often seen that businesses that use the AEM CMS use it along with Adobe’s DAM solution. So media or asset management is generally one essential AEM feature to recreate on WordPress when switching.
Create a list of all such native AEM features you may be using.
Auditing functionality built with custom coding (or through integrations with third-party systems)
Review your current integrations with external systems (CRM, ERP, marketing automation tools) and assess how they will continue to function with WordPress or if new integrations are required. (We’ll be discussing integrations in depth in the next section.)
Planning the migration of all the existing and desired AEM functionality to WordPress
Along with listing all the AEM features and functionalities you’re currently using, also note how you’ll recreate them on WordPress. Document the purpose of each feature, the user roles that interact with it, and any specific dependencies or third-party integrations it relies on. These details will guide your development efforts when you get to the execution stage.
Integrations assessment
When analyzing third-party integrations for a migration from AEM to WordPress, here are the key questions to consider:
Which third-party integrations are currently in use on AEM?
First up, you need to identify all the third-party tools, services, and platforms that you’ve integrated with your AEM environment—for example, CRMs, marketing automation solutions, payment gateways, analytics tools, etc.
Does WordPress have existing plugins or solutions for these third-party services?
Explore the WordPress integration ecosystem to identify any pre-built native integrations that could potentially replace your existing AEM integrations.
For example, if you’re using Salesforce and are moving to WordPress VIP, you can use WordPress VIP for Salesforce to bring the integration to WordPress. (We worked on this one, by the way!)
Also, this is a good time to switch your third-party services, in case you’re looking to.
What is the level of customization required for each integration?
Note the customizations you made to your third-party integrations in AEM and how they can be adapted on WordPress.
How will the data flow between WordPress and the third-party systems be managed?
Consider how you’ll sync data between your new WordPress stack and your third-party systems. What will you use? APIs, middleware, or custom integration layers?
What level of ongoing maintenance and support will be required for your third-party integrations?
Determine the long-term maintenance and support requirements for your third-party integrations, including those for updates, bug fixes, and troubleshooting.
What are the performance implications of these integrations on WordPress?
Since AEM and WordPress differ in their storage handling, evaluate how your integrations will impact your WordPress site performance, including page load times, database queries, and overall speed.
What security measures are needed for the integrations?
Ensure that security protocols such as authentication, encryption, and data privacy (e.g., GDPR compliance) are in place for all third-party integrations.
These questions will help you perform a thorough analysis of the third-party integrations and ensure that they transition smoothly from AEM to WordPress while maintaining functionality, performance, and security.
Workflow assessment
Here’s a simple process to analyze your existing AEM workflows and recreate them on WordPress. To start with, note every workflow in your current AEM setup—default or custom:
- List all the default and custom workflows you’re using in AEM, including task sequences, approval stages, triggers, and notifications.
- Next, identify any scope for any optimizations in your current workflows.
- Now for each workflow, determine if it can be replicated using WordPress’s built-in features, plugins/integrations, or if custom development is required.
Automated workflows typically trigger from events and then follow their predefined logic. So moving AEM workflows to WordPress needs you to work both these out. For this part, note how workflows are triggered in AEM (e.g., content submission, status changes, or user actions) and then define the equivalent logic in WordPress. Also research workflow management plugins or custom coding options to recreate your workflows on WordPress. If native functionality is insufficient, custom scripts or hooks may also be required. You’ll also need to document how the communications happen between all the tools that form part of the workflows.
At the end of this step, you’ll have a clear blueprint to guide your integration configurations in WordPress, ensuring no key processes are overlooked. This blueprint should have process maps (like a flowchart) showing the entire workflows end-to-end. These diagrams will serve as your reference for simulating parity later.
