What normally transfers
Posts, pages, authors, taxonomies, menu relationships, metadata, media references, and existing URLs can usually be exported. The content owner decides which statuses, revisions, users, and legacy records remain in scope.
What needs mapping or rebuilding
Inventory plugins, themes, forms, custom fields, feeds, commerce, scheduled jobs, shortcodes and blocks. The plugin owner decides whether each behaviour maps to Capell, another Laravel package, bespoke code, or retirement.
What may not transfer cleanly
Page-builder markup, undocumented plugin tables, generated image sizes, embedded third-party scripts, and inconsistent media metadata often need editorial cleanup. The media owner defines the source file, alt text, crop, rights, and broken-reference checks.
Verify URLs and search metadata
The URL and redirect owner records permalink patterns, canonicals, language paths, query-dependent pages, metadata, sitemaps, and redirect chains. Verify high-traffic URLs plus a representative sample before migration, during the pilot, and after cutover. Preserving search visibility is a migration goal, not a guarantee.
Run a representative pilot
Move one routine article and one page that depends on plugins, shortcodes or blocks, reused media, forms, and redirects. The editor acceptance owner repeats the real publishing task; the technical owner checks public HTML, metadata, media, integration behaviour, logs, and rollback.
Plan cutover and rollback
The cutover owner sets the write freeze, final export, DNS or route switch, redirect deployment, cache clear, monitoring window, and go or no-go decision. Keep WordPress recoverable and prevent conflicting writes until the acceptance owners sign off.
Start with the page most likely to expose a hidden plugin or URL assumption. If that pilot cannot preserve the required behaviour at an acceptable cost, change the scope or stay on WordPress.
