Presented at the Magnolia CMS Conference in Basel on June 26 by Remmert Stipdonk and Edgar Vonk.

1. Upgrade or
rebuild?
The Magnolia upgrade for Worldsteel

2. The dilemma
“Ok guys, so we need to take the next step here with our
website, don’t you think?”
“Huh? What are you talking about, we just finished this
huge project implementing the current one last year?”
“Yeah, I know, but that took us three years, so now we
need a new one again… sorry”

3. “Oh well, great. So what do we need now?”
“Well, uhhm…we need to upgrade to the next version of
our CMS, otherwise we’ll lose tech support in a while”
“And what will that bring us from a marketing
perspective? Since I’m paying you know…”
“Let’s see, well,… ahh, it’s really important for security
stuff???”

4. @edbananeman
Edgar VonkRemmert Stipdonk
Your presenters:
@remstip

5. ]
Started in 1994
70 specialists
Focus on design and development of platforms
Welcome to Info.nl

6. ]
Curiosity
At Info.nl we are curious
about the new world
What’s next?

7. Magnolia at Info.nl
We work with Magnolia
since 2008
These are some of our
Magnolia team members
We have a nearshore team
in Sofia, Bulgaria

8. Digital
Strategy
Digital
Services
Digital
Marketing

9. Labs
Development
Interim
Optimisation
ServicedeskMobile
Strategy UX design
Hosting
What we do, is… platform development
Social marketing

10. We like to work for

11. Van Lanschot Bankiers
Van Lanschot Bankiers is the oldest independent bank in the Netherlands, founded
in 1737. Van Lanschot's services mainly focus on high net-worth individuals and
entrepreneurs. These services are organized into four business segments: Private
Banking, Asset Management, Business Banking and Corporate Finance and
Securities.

12. Van Lanschot Magnolia upgrade
Online dialogue
with personalisation
JSP templates
and no STK
Issues with
migration scripts

13. The Magnolia upgrade
for worldsteel

14. The World Steel Association
The World Steel Association, in short worldsteel, is the association for the steel
industry. Worldsteel provides global leadership on all major strategic issues
affecting the industry, particularly focusing on economic, environmental and
social sustainability.

15. Magnolia implementation
Multi-language
Custom-made .NET
member database
Multi site environment:
Internet, extranet and intranet

16. Intake in 2012
Completed in 2014
Upgrade in 2013
Rebuild member database
Responsive design implementation
Upgrade Magnolia 5
2014-2015:
Until now:

17. Some details
Extranet with 5000 users
Very, very complex security
Before Magnolia, worldsteel used Sharepoint as a CMS
and 50 GB of documents in the DMS
Started on Magnolia 4.3.5

18. even more details
15.000 lines of code
400 XML Magnolia configuration files
140 Freemarker template scripts
Member database is a black box
Lots of customisations in AdminCentral

19. How we prepared ourselves
Functional analysis
Source code inspection
Technical analysis
Preparations for the full takeover
As you see: some serious preparations!
source code cleanup
setup OTAP
takeover of support
setup of procedures

20. What we thought the project
would be like

21. What the
project was
really like

22. Thanks go out to
Previous implementation partner Uniway
The Magnolia support team!
Wordsteel for their patience, help and understanding
Hosting provider Nucleus

23. Pitfalls

24. Pitfalls
Lack of documentation and testing means lots of guessing
Content migration is really hard to test and
still it failed on the real content
Customisations of the AdminCentral were hard to migrate
Lots of code was hard-copied from Magnolia sources and
then customised. Extend where possible!

25. …and some more advice
Rebuild of the shop was required and extending Magnolia modules is
not always easy..
The Magnolia Upgrade tool has its limits
Clean up as much (legacy) code as possible

26. Decision making

27. So…should we
upgrade or should
we rebuild?

28. Is your Magnolia
version lower than 4.4?
NO YES
Rebuild

29. Has AdminCentral been
seriously customised?
NO YES
Rebuild

30. Do the templates deviate much from
the STK or is Freemarker not used?
NO YES
Rebuild

31. Is the implementation done by an
experienced Magnolia partner?
NO YES
Rebuild

32. Did the partner apply the
Magnolia Best Practices?
NO YES
Rebuild

33. Were all the previous questions
answered positively?
NO YES
UPGRADE AWAY!

34. But beware of the following
upgrade challenges:
A customised workflow engine is difficult to upgrade
The bigger the database, the more difficult to upgrade
Upgrades will always take loads of testing labour
Upgrades will always be hard to impact
Magnolia partners have tech support, so have a partner do the upgrade

35. Remember, rebuilding means:
Content migration or re-creation
Possible redesign for newer browsers and multi-channel support
Testing, testing, testing
Requirements gathering; beware of the scope creep

36. The conclusion
“So OK I will admit, it was a bumpy ride”
“Well yes, but what matters is the end result. And now
we’re ready for the coming years, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are. The next upgrade will be a lot easier, I
promise.”

37. “Sure, I know you by now…”
“But as a matter of fact we now have an up to date,
secure, future proof CMS implementation.”.
“Great, then let’s do something with personalisation then.
That’s what the people want.”
“Let’s GO!”

38. Edgar Vonk
edgar@info.nl
Remmert Stipdonk
remmert@info.nl
Thank you!