Background
The Agrarmarkt Austria (AMA) is a key institution in the Austrian agricultural sector responsible for implementing national and European regulations and funding programs. It ensures the timely disbursement of subsidies and service payments to agricultural enterprises. In addition, market and price reporting is among its core responsibilities.
AMA provides all key information related to its areas of responsibility on an information portal. However, its technical foundation – the .NET-based CMS Kentico – was becoming outdated. Upgrading to the latest version of the existing system was not an option: it had grown far beyond AMA’s needs and had become disproportionately expensive.
It was therefore decided to migrate to a new CMS – and to use this transition as an opportunity for a relaunch, including a new design and improvements in accessibility and SEO.
In addition, the new platform was intended to serve as the foundation for three websites in total: the general information website, a separate site for AMA job listings, and a digital funding platform.
Solution
The choice quickly fell on Umbraco CMS – for two main reasons. First, being an open-source system, it eliminated licensing costs. Second, it easily met all of AMA’s requirements.
Before implementation began, the CSS team held workshops with AMA and the digital agency Overlap to review all details together. Overlap carried out a comprehensive analysis of the old website and provided the new design as well as the accessibility and SEO concept.
After the design was approved, development began. Overlap was responsible for the frontend, while CSS built the backend.
The special challenge: Data migration
As the CMS for the three new websites was being developed, one challenge remained front of mind for the CSS team: migrating the content from the extensive information portal.
AMA’s portal provides a vast amount of information. For example, the site includes an archive with data dating back to 2001, and all links had to remain accessible after the migration – resulting in more than 7,000 redirects and thousands of media files that needed to remain discoverable.
With this in mind, the CSS team set up the new CMS and ultimately managed to migrate about 99,9% of all pages through automated migration.
Impact
The migration to Umbraco proved to be the right decision for several reasons:
With Umbraco, Agrarmarkt Austria now has a modern, scalable foundation for its information resources. Three websites can now be managed on a user-friendly CMS platform.
In addition, a third-party module enables AMA to distribute information via newsletters to around 3,500 subscribers across 15 mailing lists.
It was ensured that no information was lost during the migration – everything AMA has published since 2001 remains accessible.
The new design is not only clearer and easier to navigate but also meets the high accessibility standards required of a public authority such as AMA.
And all of this comes without any licensing costs for Umbraco.
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