Migrating Umbraco sites has become easy

I've completed so many Umbraco migrations over the past year that they've become incredibly easy to execute. Now that I've been doing them for a while, I've created a template that I follow to make the process almost automatic.

I'm currently migrating an Umbraco 7 site to Umbraco 14. This is all thanks to the super awesome folks at Jumoo. They're the creators of uSync and other Umbraco migration packages that allow me to export data from the old sites and import it directly into the new sites, all without having to manually update or configure the data at all. This is a really big time saver for me and my clients, which in the end saves them money.

There are some nuances, though. For instance, you can't migrate content straight from version 7 to 14, and Jumoo's migration packages are not yet available for version 13. Of course, there is no one-click-solution, after the data has been migrated, you still need to migrate all the supporting code that was developed for the older sites. This is a bit trickier because the code from the previous .NET Framework doesn't port directly over to .NET Core - which is what the current versions of Umbraco run on.

Here's my step-by-step process for Umbraco migration:

1. Upgrade the current Umbraco site to version 7.15 - if it's not there yet
2. Use Jumoo's Umbraco Migration pack to create an export pack
3. Create a new Umbraco 12 site
4. Install uSync and uSync Migrations into Umbraco 12
5. Import the exported pack from version 7.15
6. Convert files and datatypes to version 12 using uSync Migrations
7. Upgrade Umbraco 12 to Umbraco 13
8. Copy views and templates from 7.15 to 13
9. Manually update controllers, templates, views, and forms

This template has significantly streamlined my migration process, making it more efficient and less prone to errors.