6. Initial set-up – WP Engine
✓Enable WordPress multisite:
Visit user Portal and choose your Install > Utilities > Enable Multisite
Why use multisite?
All sites within the multisite network shared the same core files, theme,
and plugins. Updates only have to happen once, rather than logging into
the individual sites.
7. The website build process
Plugins used
1. MultiSite Clone Duplicator - Cloned the initial template, including all page
content, shortcodes, settings, users, and roles.
2. Shortcoder - Allowed me to adjust shortcodes for elements that appeared
multiple times in the site content.
3. Domain Mapping by WPMU DEV - To map the domains as each website
was finalized.
9. We were all ready to start the migrations
But wait, there’s no master list of websites?
10. Challenges...oh my!
1. There was no master list of web domains that was kept up-to-date.
2. The marketing team had never even seen a clinic website.
3. There was no successful strategy in place to communicate with clinics
owners to choose their new template.
12. Audit – Sales & Dev teams
1. There was no master list of web domains and their status’ that was
kept up-to-date.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management ) tool requirements
Fields required for:
• Website suspensions (if the haven’t paid for 3 months in a row)
• Website cancellations
Training for:
• Client services team
13. Audit – Finance team
1. There was no master list of web domains and their status’ that was
kept up-to-date.
What about our finance team?
14. Audit – Marketing team
2. The marketing team had never even seen a clinic website.
So we met in person to review.
15. Strategy
3. There was no successful strategy in place to communicate with clinic
owners to choose their new template.
My strategy
• I e-blasted 200 clinics/day advertising the new website features
and included the migration request form. Migrations started
happening!!!
16. Additional lessons learned
• The sales team was not interested in doing anything that didn’t
make them commission
• Neither were the business account mangers
• Having 6 template options was too many for clinic owners
• Not all clinic owners were responsive to the e-blast from
MailChimp
• Direct calls to the clinic owners regarding website migrations
didn’t help
Hi everyone, my name is Christie Witt.
• Comedian
• Full-time graphic designer from Ottawa where I work as the in-house designer for Canadian Physiotherapy Association. • • • • • Previously, I worked for Canadian Internet Registration Authority as Graphic Designer before I audited the business process for the 1300+ website migrations at Ideal Protein.
• Sample of the old look versus the new look.
• When I first started at Ideal Protein, all 1300 websites were on a legacy, custom-built CMS • Many issues and was difficult to mass-update.
• New websites are a very basic 6-8 pages for simplicity sake,
• We managed the content and updates as a team of only 2 people.
• A custom plugin was built to feed leads from each websites contact form into a leads panel on an App that was available for each clinic owner.
• Initially 6 demo WordPress sites were set up • A form was available on the landing page for clinic owners to select their color schemes, upload their logo, a custom header image, and list their web domain and email address.
• These form results linked into our Zendesk ticketing system and that’s how we received each migration request. • There was also a Terms of agreement section that limited the acceptable number of pages and revisions per site.
• There was another form for site that only needed modifications made to their existing migrated site. • The form was organized by page type. • We most often received requests to add new customer testimonials to the sites.
• There was another basic form not organized by page type, which seemed to be easier for clients.
• We set up WordPress multisite through the WPengine user portal. • All sites within the multisite network shared the same core files, theme, and plugins. • Updates only had to happen once, rather than logging into the individual sites.
• We had 4 Pods set up within the WP engine instance and found that the backend of each pod slowed down when we reached a point of 350 websites on each pod.
WordPress Multisite was set up! Now we were ready to build the websites. There were a number of plugins used, but here are a few of the key ones.
Multisite clone duplicator – cloned the initial template, including all page content, shortcodes, settings, users, and roles.
Shortcoder - Allowed me to adjust shortcodes for elements that appeared multiple times in the site content. This included the email address, phone number, and clinic name in these instances.
3. Domain Mapping by WPMU DEV - This was used to map the domains as each website was finalized. I could force HTTP/HTTPS with this tool, which not all domain mapping plugins can do.
• We used Divi as the page builder because this was before Gutenburg
• It’s a drag-and-drop builder that includes 46 modules to build pages and posts.
• The Divi builder is added to the page editor.
• Most importantly, it supports global elements. • For example, we required the exact same text to be included on different websites.
• Divi allowed us to update and deploy the common text as needed.
I was all set to start the website migrations and eager to get a master list. Only to find out there isn’t one.
Challenges...oh my!
I learned that there was no master list of web domains and their status’ that was kept up-to-date.
The marketing team had never even seen a clinic website.
No successful strategy in place to communicate with clinic owners to choose their new template.
Audit...oh my! I started the business process audit
1. There was no master list of web domains that was kept up-to-date. How did I realize this? Well, no one could pull me a list, from anywhere. I pulled a list myself from highrise and started manually spot checking the notes and correspondence with clinic owners.
• There had been requests for the odd website to be cancelled and that those websites were still live, which meant that we were still paying for hosting.
• I asked more questions, and found out that a separate list of even more websites needed to be exported, because Highrise didn’t include web domains that we didn’t own. So I got that list as well, merged everything, and essentially prepped it for import to our new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that was just being custom built with requirements from the sales team. • I did manually check each domain and its status in highrise and within the finance invoicing tool before importing.
Audit – Sales & Dev teams
I then met with the sales team.
• Over last year, we’d never been informed of a single website suspension due to staff turnover. • I then met with the developers of the CRM, which stands for (Customer Relationship Management)• They set up fields for - website suspensions (if unpaid for 3 months in a row)
- website cancellations with date pickers.
• Automated alerts and reporting were set up to notify us of the website status’ weekly.
• The client services team was also trained on how to use these new fields.
Audit – Finance team
• I asked more questions and then got a login to our finance invoicing tool. • I had to let them know that there were over 100 outstanding invoices that effected the websites. - I didn’t know if I should be migrating these sites or suspending them since they were unpaid.
• The finance team got the invoices resolved within a month through phone calls.
• A new process was put in place so that they would notify us weekly of clinics that had not paid their invoices in 3 months and they started to make regular calls to follow up.
Audit – Marketing team
2. The marketing team had never even seen a clinic website. • I sat down with the marketing team and walked them through the websites, templates and capabilities. • They had just launched the marketing guidelines and mailed them to each clinic, excluding the website templates.
• This would have been a good opportunity to advertise the new website templates if they had known what the IT team had been building.
Strategy
3. There was no successful strategy in place to communicate with clinic owners to choose their new template.My strategy• I e-blasted 200 clinics/day advertising the new website features and included the link to the migration request form. Migrations started happening! I was able to do 8 website migrations per day.
Lessons learned:
• The sales team was not interested in doing anything that didn’t make them commission (For example, they didn’t even want to mention the websites on their calls)
The business account mangers didn’t want to mention the websites on their calls either (also commission based)
Having 6 template options was too many for clinic owners
Not all clinic owners were responsive to the e-blast from MailChimp (even after 3 rounds of sending it)
Even direct calls to the clinic owners regarding website migrations didn’t help. They often asked our sales rep to fill out the migration form for them
• Clinic owners were an older generation and did not see the value of the new templates, even when we listed it out. • It was hard to get them on the phone or looking at their emails in general as they often meet face-to-face with customers throughout the day.
• In hindsight, the best way of advertising the website migrations would have been when the marketing team mailed out the marketing guidelines with an order of the Ideal Protein product to each clinic.
• Overall I learned that it’s really important to ask lots of questions about the entire business process before starting a series of migrations such as this one. And its helpful to take a step back.
• Any questions?