When Should I Migrate My Kentico Portal Site to MVC?
So, you know that we’ve released Kentico 12 with all its awesome MVC support. And you know you should be using MVC for all your new sites. Sounds like a perfect plan! But what about your existing sites? Our Support and Consulting teams are fielding a lot of questions from our partners as to when they should migrate their existing Portal sites. Because everyone loves charts, I made a handy workflow for you in this article to help you out.
When it comes to new Kentico development, the path is clear. You need to be using MVC as your development model, as this will be the future of web development as we know it. While this is a great plan for new projects, a big question always comes up for existing sites built on our legacy Portal engine: Should they be migrated? It’s a complicated question to answer, as there are many factors that come into play.
After talking with our Support and Consulting teams, I’ve put together the following workflow to help you decide. It’s not bullet-proof, but it should give you a good starting point when it comes to pre-Kentico 12 applications.
NOTES
- Kentico is committed to supporting Portal development through 2022. This means that any site you plan on taking care of after that date needs to be MVC!
- A lot of people ask about upgrading to MVC. We don’t recommend this, as the technical differences between the two architectures cause a lot of headaches when trying this approach. Developers will be much better off starting their MVC sites from scratch and migrating over their Portal content and functionality.
When Should I Migrate My Portal Site to MVC?
As you can see from the workflow, if and when you migrate your sites depends on your individual needs. If you are planning to support the site past 2022, you will need to migrate it at some point to ensure Kentico can provide fixes and updates. If companies have any planned redesigns or enhancements, that is a great time to do the migration as developers will already be working with the code. Be sure to evaluate all the factors when deciding when is the best time for you to make the shift.
In case you missed it, we recently published a similar workflow on choosing a development model for your new Kentico 12 sites. It has a lot of the same considerations, so be sure to check it out, as well.
Which Development Model Should You Choose for Your Kentico EMS Site?
Moving forward
When a software company lays out it’s future plans, it always has a lasting effect in the industry. While we make every effort to minimize the impact to our customers, technology never stands still and we must evolve with it. As more and more developers focus on MVC, we too must plan for the future and ensure Kentico EMS is the right foundation for your projects. While this may force you to evaluate your Portal engine sites, in the end you will have a much more streamlined and capable solution built on MVC. Good luck!