Preparing your move from Adobe Business Catalyst to BlueberryCMS

Adobe Business Catalyst Migrations in BlueberryCMS are a cinch. Our migration tool will take care of the heavy lifting for you. There are a few manual steps required depending on the type of site your migrating. Otherwise, the process is fairly straight forward.

Let's get started!

• Prerequisites
• Step by Step Migration Guide

Migrating Your Site

First thing's first. Migrate your website to BlueberryCMS using our free migration tool. This gives you the perfect opportunity to pre-stage the switch to BlueberryCMS and test out all of your site's functions before launching.

Once all of your pages and content have been copied over, you can immediately begin to try out your website in Preview Mode and will be given a Demo URL that looks something like: https://demo.secureworldservers.com/YourAgency/YourWebsite

Browse through the site and make sure everything is functioning normally. Our Support Team is happy to provide assistance if needed. See our Prerequisites document for simple fixes to migration problems like Menus and Data Collections (WebApps).

Purchase BlueberryCMS Hosting Plan

If you haven't already, setup your Agency Profile to include your billing address. 

In order to use website publishing and domain mapping, proceed with purchasing a BlueberryCMS hosting plan under the Billing Tab on your Website Project Settings. Then follow the steps below.

Understanding DNS and Email 

DNS is a service that maps domain names to IP addresses and other hosts. Nameservers are the servers in which control those mappings. DNS Records dictate where your website is pointed, where your email is pointed, and possibly other important services as well. 

Changing DNS records and Nameservers can cause potential downtime for your customer. We recommend taking a moment to understand and collect the information below to ensure a smooth transition.

Once you get a good grasp on this process, it will be a piece of cake for all your future migrations. Or maybe a piece of pie. Blueberry pie.

Using Adobe's DNS Management: Most people are probably using Adobe Business Catalyst DNS Management. So it is important to understand that since Adobe Business Catalyst is being discontinued, so are their DNS services. Be prepared to make significant changes that might require a bit of downtime for your customer.  

Step 1) Locate your customer's Domain Registrar. (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, ENOM, etc.) This is the place where the domain was originally purchased. You will need to gain access to the account. Work with your customer on getting access to the account like obtaining their Username and Password. You might need to contact the registrar's tech support.

Step 2) Make sure that the Domain Registrar offers DNS Management. Don't change anything yet. The registrar almost always provides this service and calls it something along the lines of "Using Our Nameservers" or "Use Default Nameservers".  

You'll most likely see that your Nameservers are currently pointed to ns1.worldsecureservers.com and ns2, ns3, etc. After reading through this document, you'll see that one of the last things you'll need to do is change your Nameservers to point back to your Domain Registrar's Nameservers. Save this for Launch Day.

Step 3) Login to Adobe BC to document and familiarize yourself with with your customer's DNS records. https://docs.worldsecuresystems.com/user-manual/site-settings/site-domains/setup-advanced-dns-records

Important: It is crucial to document your customer's A records, CNAME records, MX records, and check the other records as well. When it comes time to changing your nameservers back to the Domain Registrar, you will need to re-create these important DNS records that were previously in Adobe BC.

Step 4) Find out how your customer is using email. Are they using Adobe BC's email service? BlueberryCMS offers a seamless transition. This process can be done before you launch your website and your customer won't experience any downtime.

• Immediately contact our Support Team to let us know you need to move your email services from Adobe BC to BlueberryCMS. This process can take a couple days so it is best to start this process right away. We work directly with Adobe BC's email provider and switch your accounts over to BlueberryCMS.
• You will be required to create a special TXT record for domain ownership verification purposes. So be prepared to make one once you receive our instructions. You can make the TXT record using Adobe's DNS management tool or your other DNS provider.
• Once we have confirmed that your email was successfully moved to BlueberryCMS, we can then proceed with the next steps.
• If the customer is using email service outside of Adobe BC, then the only thing you need to do is know exactly what their current MX records are, because you'll need to re-create these records later. 
• As long as you recreate the DNS records correctly, your customer should not need to reconfigure their email clients or mobile devices where they receive email.

If they're using a 3rd party service like G-Suite or Office 365, then you do not need to provision any email services with BlueberryCMS, but you will need to make sure your know their MX records and SRV records if applicable. 

You can find out the specifics using the links below.

G-Suite: https://support.google.com/a/answer/174125?hl=en

Office 365: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/get-help-with-domains/create-dns-records-at-any-dns-hosting-provider?view=o365-worldwide

Step 5) Schedule a launch date with your customer. Let them know you're switching hosting providers and that you've chosen a time outside of normal business hours so that you don't affect their business operations. 

Launch Day

• Make sure your preview site in BlueberryCMS looks and operates exactly how you want it.
• Have the list of documented DNS records ready to go.
• Switch the Nameservers to your Domain Registrar.
• Immediately re-create the DNS records you've documented.
• Create the new WWW CNAME record for your website. Or another sub-domain of your choosing. The value of this record will vary depending on your region:
  • North America: b.secureworldservers.com
  • Asia Pacific: b.ap.secureworldservers.com
  • More to come....
• Open up the Website Project in BlueberryCMS and navigate to Site > Hosting > Site Domains and add your new domain. Please note that a sub-domain is required. By default we've automatically entered in WWW but you can change this if you want. Be sure to correctly answer the questions on the screen. For root level domains, simply add a sub-domain first, then use your Domain Registrar to forward YOURDOMAIN.COM to WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM.
• Navigate to Content > Web Pages and click the Publish Site button.
• Now simply wait for the DNS changes you've made to propagate throughout the internet. They're usually fairly quick but can sometimes take up to 24 hours.
• Your site is now live and ready to go!