Exclusive CMS Hub AMA Nov 14 - 18 | Website Migrations

[PatrickEng]

Hey HubSpot Community, 

My name is Patrick Eng and I’m a member of the Onboarding Scale Team at HubSpot. Throughout this week, we’ll be running an Ask Me Anything (AMA) that will answer all of your website migration questions. Have you ever wanted to speak to experts on HubSpot’s Migration’s team? Well, now's your chance!

Need some suggestions for what to ask? Here are some example questions:

• What’s the benefit of bringing my website to HubSpot?
• How much can I customize a Theme?
• Is there a way to Import my pages into HubSpot?
• How much does it cost to migrate a website to HubSpot?
• How complex can a HubSpot website be? Can my developers work in it?

We have team members from all around HubSpot spending this week answering your questions:

A.J. LaPorte (@AJLaPorte) - Senior CMS Developer Advocate

Allison Nichols (@anichols) - Principal Onboarding Specialist

Patrick Eng (@PatrickEng) - Senior Customer Onboarding Specialist

Ernestina Spinu (@eSpinu) - Senior Customer Support Specialist

Kaitlyn Nadeau - Principal Replatforming Specialist

Collin Newberg - Principal Replatforming Specialist

Eric Salvi - Migrations Team Lead

Feel free to drop in your questions below. We’ll start answering questions on November 14th and until 3 PM EST on November 18th.

We're looking forward to hearing from you soon!

[EDash]

I know I'm a bit late to the migration task. I have a small bit of PHP code that works to create a contact as needed. I've tried to follow the guidance in the migration article, but I am unable to get past an error. I'm pretty sure that I've created the private app successfully. Here's the code that I have now:

// Now, add the lead to HubSpot as a Contact

  $arr = array(

    'properties' => array(

        array(

        'property' => 'company',

        'value' => 'unknown'

      ),

      array(

        'property' => 'email',

        'value' => $hubemail

      ),

      array(

        'property' => 'firstname',

        'value' => $first_name

      ),

      array(

        'property' => 'lastname',

        'value' => $last_name

      ),

      array(

        'property' => 'phone',

        'value' => $phone

      ),

      array(

        'property' => 'message',

        'value' => $description." **Lead source: ".$lead_source

      )

    )

  );

  $post_json = json_encode($arr);

  $nhtoken = "My token info purposely removed";

  $headers = [

      'Content-Type: application/json',

      'Authorization: Bearer ' . $nhtoken,

  ];

  $endpoint = 'https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/contacts';

  $ch = @curl_init();

  @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);

  @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_json);

  @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $endpoint);

  @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);

  @curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

  $response = @curl_exec($ch);

  $status_code = @curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

  $curl_errors = curl_error($ch);

  @curl_close($ch);

So, I believe it is getting past the curl_init.

I am getting this response (with a status code of 400): {"status":"error","message":"Invalid input JSON on line 1, column 15:
Cannot deserialize value of type `java.util.LinkedHashMap<java.lang.String,java.lang.String>`
from Array value (token `JsonToken.START_ARRAY`)",
"correlationId":"32d18bc4-8bdd-41ca-b296-189f768835df"}

I have searched for other resolutions for this and tried a few other things, but nothing has resolved the issue.

Am I missing some other code? I can still use curl, correct? I'd rather not bring in any other libraries unless its absolutely necessary. Thank you for any help!

[PatrickEng]

Hi @EDash ,

Sorry for the late response but since this AMA is more website migration-related and not API data migration, I would highly recommend joining our HubSpot Developer Slack Community and crowdsourcing an answer from that community. 

[Dwigt]

Hi Isabel! 

Thanks for your questions! Not too late 🙂 

Please see answers to each of your questions below. 

1) How technically difficult would it be to migrate our pages, built with ACF, to Hubspot? Since we're not working with a website builder, is migration technically possible or would we need to create it from scratch?

Answer

TL;DR: As long as we have access to your site (for example at https://www.wetravel.com/ or even a staging site!) and can crawl your site , we can see if it is a fit for one of our migration services. 

About the process and our services

Process

• Submit your site’s URL and someone from the Replatforming Team audits the site to see if it’s a fit for one or more migration service (for example, it could be a fit for both).
• Once the site is approved, it typically takes 2-4 weeks for the migration to be completed.
• During and after the migration, you’ll have access to a Replatforming Specialist who can help you with migration-related questions and the go-live process. 

Services

I’ll link to some additional information about the services we offer, but wanted to give an overview here. The services below are dependent on a website audit. 

Full Migration (info here)

• An “as-is” service where we migrate your site as it exists today - the look and feel - rebuilt in the HubSpot CMS.
• If you like your existing site’s style, this can be a great option.
• It also sounds like you’re working with a dev team and in that case can be a great jumping off point, as post-migration the dev team can access the code and continue to make changes as desired, while non-coders will be able to access and manage content from our drag and drop editor.

Migrate to a Theme (see image attached at the bottom)

• Looking to update the look and feel of your website? This is a great option! 
• With this option, we’ll migrate over your existing content into a theme of your choice from our Asset Marketplace, Envato's Themeforest Marketplace, or a default HubSpot theme. 
• In this service, you’ll provide us with your site, a style and branding guide, your desired theme, and we’ll do the rest!
• Like our Full Migration, this service can also act as a great jumping off point for developers and content managers. 

2) Is there a way to quickly migrate posts that were created directly on the WordPress CMS without running into formatting issues like broken images?

Answer

• HubSpot has 4 free blog import tools
• Since the content you referred to is on WordPress, I’d try our WordPress connect tool first, which pretty much does all the heavy lifting for you.
• The other free blog import tools compatible with this WordPress blog are the Smart copy, CSV file upload, and XML file upload.
• I would try these options next and in this order, if the WordPress connect tool doesn’t bring over something like images.
• Generally speaking, the WordPress connect and Smart copy tools (which are easier to use), bring over most, if not all content in a clean manner, however it’s worth testing an option out and spot-checking some posts for any clean up that may be required. 

A couple more notes about the WordPress connect and Smart copy tools: 

• Once the blog is crawled and any mappings have been put in place, you’ll have a chance to see what could be mapped and couldn’t before importing
• You also have the option to pick and choose what posts you’d like to import. 

3) How does migration impact SEO? Is taking this portion of our sitemap out of the main domain to lodge it in Hubspot going to affect our DA or overall positioning? 

Answer

 With a migration to any new platform you can expect a temporary dip in SEO, as Google recrawls and re-indexes your site. This usually evens out after a few weeks. 

You can mitigate some of this effect by:

• Re-submitting your sitemap to Google (which you can also get from HubSpot to submit to Google)
• Making sure any redirects are in place, such as for pages that no longer exist (i.e. so instead of them going to a 404 page, they’d go to the new version of that page or the home page of your site).

Here is a checklist on how to successfully migrate a site without harming SEO. 

If this is a long-term priority for your team, we would also recommend working with an SEO specialist.

To answer your question about taking part of your site and hosting it on HubSpot:

• In this scenario it sounds like you’d have your main site (www) remain where hosted and another subdomain (like academy.wetravel.com) on HubSpot? 
• If so, using the tips above will help preserve any SEO these pages had, though I’d expect a dip in SEO for a couple of months while you implement marketing efforts to increase the authority.

Please let us know if we can clarify anything here or you have additional questions! 

Migrate to a Theme service overview

[IsabelEspinoza]

Thank you so much for your reply, Dwigt! 

Is there any way we can schedule a meeting with someone to address some additional questions my manager and I have? We're interested in the service, we just need to clarify some additional details. Please, feel free to contact my email (isabel.espinoza@wetravel.com) if you think we can communicate better there. 🙂

Thanks again!

Best,

Isabel. 

[Dwigt]

Hi Isabel,

Sounds good! I'll reach out to you directly to continue the conversation.

Looking forward to it!

[IsabelEspinoza]

Hey Patrick! 

This is Isabel Espinoza, Content Specialist for WeTravel. We're currently looking into migrating a part of our website to Hubspot. The motivation for us to do this is to gain more control over page structure and page creation for our Academy. We have several plans and needs that require a quicker turnaround that our webmaster and dev team can provide. Nevertheless, I have a few questions:

1) How technically difficult would it be to migrate our pages, built with ACF, to Hubspot? Since we're not working with a website builder, is migration technically possible or would we need to create it from scratch?

2) Is there a way to quickly migrate posts that were created directly on the WordPress CMS without running into formatting issues like broken images?

3) How does migration impact SEO? Is taking this portion of our sitemap out of the main domain to lodge it in Hubspot going to affect our DA or overall positioning? 

Thank you very much for your help! 

Looking forward to hearing from you and I hope I'm not too late to ask!

Best,

Isabel

(isabel.espinoza@wetravel.com)