Post Migration
Validation, cleanup, and promotion discipline after an import lands.
Post Migration is the cycle that runs after an import has completed. It converts an import event into a verified production-ready site. Where Import handles the moment data arrives, Post Migration handles the moment the team confirms the arrived data behaves as expected — and only after that confirmation does the site get treated as ready to serve real traffic.
This page is the Reference definition of the post-migration discipline — what validation covers, where the cleanup steps land, and how promotion from staging to live is shaped.
What is this for?
Read this page when you want the structural definition of SGEN's post-migration validation cycle — what gets validated, where cleanup happens, and what production-ready means inside the migration lifecycle.
The page is a Reference definition. It does not walk you through a specific validation procedure — those live in Guides. It is the framing that operators apply when a migration import has completed and the team needs to confirm the imported state holds up.
Good use cases
- You ran an import and need the validation framework before treating the site as production-ready.
- You are scoping a multi-week migration project and need to plan the post-migration window.
- You are explaining to a stakeholder why "the import finished" does not mean "the migration is done".
- You are designing internal SOPs for migration handoff and need the validation discipline.
- You hit a "did the migration succeed?" question and want the structural model.
What NOT to use this for
- Step-by-step validation procedures — open the relevant Guide.
- Pre-import preparation — open the Import Reference and Backups Reference.
- Recovery operations — open Recovery Considerations.
- Per-release shipped behavior change — open What's New or Changelog.
How this connects to other features
- Migration and Import Overview — parent Reference area framing the broader migration discipline.
- Import — the entry path; Post Migration follows once the import lands.
- Backups — the safeguard captured before the import; Post Migration assumes the snapshot exists.
- Search and Replace — the bulk cleanup operation often run during the post-migration window.
- Recovery Considerations — the rollback framing if validation surfaces a blocking issue.
Definition
Post Migration is the validation and cleanup cycle that runs after an import has completed and before the migrated site is treated as production-ready. The cycle has a defined shape — record reconciliation, structural validation, behavior validation, cleanup pass, sign-off — and a defined exit condition: the imported state passes every validation step and the team promotes staging to live.
The defining property is gate. Post Migration is a gate between "the import finished" and "the migration is done". The gate exists because import success and migration success are different states; the cycle on this page is what converts the first into the second.
Purpose
The purpose of this page is to define the post-migration cycle as a Reference layer rather than as a configuration walkthrough. It explains what validation covers, where cleanup happens, what production-ready means inside the migration lifecycle, and how the cycle pairs with the Import and Backups disciplines.
Scope
This page covers post-migration discipline at the Reference level — the cycle rather than the procedure.
The page covers:
- The validation steps that run after an import lands.
- The cleanup operations that often need to happen during the post-migration window.
- The promotion-from-staging-to-live discipline at the end of the cycle.
- The boundary against Import (entry path) and Recovery Considerations (rollback framing).
- Step-by-step validation procedures — Guides.
- Per-source validation specifics (per-platform import gotchas) — internal-only or per-source Guide.
- Per-release shipped behavior change — What's New or Changelog.
The validation cycle
Post-migration validation runs in a defined sequence. Each step has a clear pass/fail signal so the team knows whether to advance, return for fix, or roll back.
Record reconciliation
Compare the count and identifying metadata of imported records against the source-side count. The platform's identification metadata (captured at import) supports this reconciliation. A pass means counts match and identifiers align; a fail means records are missing, duplicated, or shape-mismatched.
Structural validation
Walk the imported records through the corresponding SG-Admin module and confirm the structural shape (taxonomies, relationships, custom fields, attachments) survived the import. A pass means the records look right inside the per-module surfaces; a fail means structural data was lost or rewired during import.
Behavior validation
Open key pages on the staging public surface and confirm rendered behavior. A pass means pages render, navigation works, forms submit, and the site behaves as the imported state intended; a fail means visible behavior breaks somewhere.
Cleanup pass
Address the post-import items that need adjustment — bulk URL replacement (often via Search and Replace), per-record cleanup, theme adjustments, custom-code adjustments. The cleanup pass is the predictable part; the discipline is doing it before promotion, not after.
Sign-off
The team confirms that reconciliation, structural validation, behavior validation, and cleanup all passed. Sign-off is the gate before promotion.
Site · staging.example.com
Post-migration validation
Promotion to live
Promotion from staging to live is the explicit operator action that ends the post-migration cycle. The platform supports promotion through the standard staging-vs-live workflow; promoting is a deliberate event, not an automatic outcome of the validation cycle passing.
The recommended posture is: complete every validation step on staging, achieve sign-off, then promote. Promoting before validation completes converts the migration from a planned event into an unplanned recovery exercise.
Constraints and boundaries
Post Migration is a Reference area for the validation gate between import and production-ready. It is not a substitute for the Import Reference or the Recovery Considerations Reference; it is the cycle that connects them.
Use Post Migration for:
- Validating the imported state before treating the site as ready.
- Planning the post-import cleanup window.
- Defining the sign-off condition before staging-to-live promotion.
- The entry path that Post Migration follows.
- The rollback framing if validation surfaces a blocking issue.
Public boundary
This page is intentionally public-safe. It does not expose validation internals, identification-metadata format, or protected operational identifiers.
Examples
Example 1 — Migration operator runs validation after a content batch import
The operator completes the import (583 records). They walk record reconciliation (counts and identifiers verified), structural validation (per-module surfaces look right), and start behavior validation on the staging public surface. They find that 14 internal URLs still point at the source platform. They run Search and Replace, re-run behavior validation, achieve sign-off, then promote staging to live.
Example 2 — Validation surfaces a blocking issue
Behavior validation reveals that several pages render with broken layout because the source platform's custom shortcodes did not translate. The operator opens Recovery Considerations for the framing, decides whether to fix in place (cleanup pass + custom-code adjustment) or roll back (restore the pre-import backup and rescope the import). The Reference frames the decision; the operator chooses based on the specific failure mode.
Example 3 — Stakeholder asks "when is the migration done?"
The platform lead opens this page and walks the validation cycle. The migration is done when sign-off completes and the staging-to-live promotion finishes. Until those two events, the migration is in flight regardless of how long ago the import event itself completed. The Reference gives the stakeholder a clear definition of done.
Documentation guidance
Use this page as the structural definition for the post-migration cycle. Procedural detail belongs in Guides; per-release behavior change belongs in What's New or Changelog. Cross-reference Import and Backups when the question moves backwards into the entry path or the safeguard layer; cross-reference Recovery Considerations when it moves forward into rollback territory.Reading order
Open this page after Import has completed and before any promotion-to-live action. Pair with Search and Replace when the cleanup pass needs bulk URL or content adjustment. Pair with Recovery Considerations when validation surfaces a blocking issue and the team needs the rollback framing.
Related reading
- Migration and Import Overview — parent Reference area.
- Import — entry path that Post Migration follows.
- Backups — pre-import safeguard.
- Search and Replace — common cleanup operation during the post-migration window.
- Recovery Considerations — rollback framing when validation fails.
- SG-Admin Overview — where structural and per-module validation lands.
Vocabulary cross-reference
- Post-migration window is the time between import completion and staging-to-live promotion.
- Validation cycle is the sequence of reconciliation / structural / behavior / cleanup / sign-off steps.
- Sign-off is the explicit confirmation that every validation step passed.
- Promotion is the explicit operator action moving staging state to live.
- Production-ready means the validation cycle completed and sign-off was given.
Maintenance discipline
When validation behavior changes across releases, update this Reference and log the change in Changelog. The cycle stays valuable because the five-step shape stays small. New validation tools that ship should land inside the existing steps rather than as a new top-level step.