Website Development

Data Migration 3D Illustration by Martin Joiner

Web development is all the tricky little technical code that turns an average website into a fine-tuned beast. Users never notice a good web developer's work but it is essential. When something happens seamlessly it is close-up magic. Common examples of this are:

Taking care to make sure old page addresses redirect to new ones when a website is redesigned and restructured. Avoiding Error 404 messages or link rot.
Ensuring the website looks good when it is shared through Google, Facebook or any of the other technologies behind the many online communities.
Hiding email addresses so they are less likely to be found by spam-bots.
Building a properly normalised database with a logical structure.
Adding error catchers to a Content Management System to keep your data clean and tidy.

This is where being a polymath really pays off. Divide the roles of designer and developer among two employees and it becomes incredibly difficult to efficiently communicate what's needed. These types of development tasks are best done on the fly during the design process where they will get done immediately and never lost or forgotten.

Data Migration

There are 3 main types of data migration that clients find it useful to employ me for...

From your old website to your new one: The Problem: You have had a new website installed but it contains no product data. Your old website is still sitting on a server somewhere containing data on hundreds of products.
My Solution: I can retrieve all that old data, manipulate its structure to match the new architecture and input it to the new server. All along the way, systematically checking for errors.
From a supplier's website to yours: The Problem: Your supplier has kindly given you access to a back-office website with all product data but it is taking you ages to copy the information across to your own website manually.
My Solution: I can build tools that will move batches of data across or sometimes move the whole lot in one large batch; completing in days what could take you weeks.
From another website to yours: The Problem: A partner website has given you permission to take data and images from their site but they do not want to grant access to back-office systems or server control panels where sensitive financial data is visible.
Solution: In this case a data ripper can be used. A tool that you feed a URL address and it pulls out product title, description, price, SKU code, images and any other data that is available. Each ripper is custom made for whichever site it will be feeding from, and can be used for as long as both sites are structured the way they are.

Case Study

January 2011: An online retailer has a brand new website built to replace their old OsCommerce site. The task that she now has in hand is to transfer all the data from her old site over to the new one. The client has the option of doing it herself by trawling through page after page of data, copying and pasting information, downloading and uploading image files, wasting a lot of time that would be better spent running her company. She has also realised that the prices have become out of date and need adjusting upwards by 2%.

I came to the rescue....

I studied both database structures, migrated the data, sat with the client to manually confirm it was all as expected. I then did a batch price change to bring prices in line with new policy and finally, as a bonus gift, produced a series of data rippers that allowed her to easily pull fresh product data from the websites of various suppliers.

The entire process took 4 days, I transferred 1,571 sets of product information and over 2800 images. The website was live within 2 weeks and I charged my standard day rate. My client calculated that her workload was reduced to just 8% of the time it would have taken to do it manually, without my assistance. Therefore, I effectively paid for myself.