Fourteen websites, one platform: lessons from consolidation

Organisations rarely decide to run fourteen websites. It happens one campaign, one region, one product at a time. Each site gets its own theme, its own plugins and its own copy of the same fixes. A few years later, every change costs fourteen times as much, and nobody is sure which version is the real one.

Our engineers have consolidated 14 WordPress sites into a single multisite, led Drupal migrations across major versions, and simplified a platform of more than 300 sites, cutting its custom code to under 20% of its original size while every site stayed live. The lessons repeat.

Start with an inventory, not a design

List every site, template, plugin, integration and scheduled job, and who depends on each. Most of the cost of a consolidation hides in the integrations nobody remembered.

Keep every address that earns

Export each site’s addresses that get search traffic or links before you touch anything. Each one needs a planned destination on the new platform. Forwarding everything to a home page throws away what each site had earned in search.

Delete code, do not port it

The biggest win is usually not the new platform but what you leave behind. Fourteen copies of a similar feature become one. Custom code that a maintained module or core feature now covers is retired. Less code means fewer things that can break during the move, and after it.

Migrate content with scripts, run them many times

Content migration should be a repeatable script, not a manual copy. Run it against fresh copies until the output is boring: same counts, same fields, no surprises. Then the final run is a formality.

Move sites in waves

One small site first, to prove the path. Then the rest in groups, each with its own checks and its own way back. A single “big bang” weekend turns every unknown into an emergency.

Write down how to undo it

Every wave has a written way to switch back. It is rarely used. Having it is what lets the team move with confidence.