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Import to Kontent.ai

Tomas Nosek and Boris Pocatko
4 min read
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If your company has been on the market for some time, it has most likely piled a lot of content already. With the existing content, moving to a different CMS doesn’t mean that you need to create everything from scratch. Migrate to Kontent.ai and make the start easier for you.

Importing content also gives you an excellent opportunity to review what content your company has. Verify that the content is still relevant and update it as necessary.

Table of contents

    Key points

    • Kontent.ai is an API-first platform, so migrating content to it is possible. You can use different ways to achieve that.
    • For the import, choose one of the tools available or use Management API.
    • Use migration as an opportunity to do a content audit where you evaluate what content is still relevant.

    Import what makes sense

    Avoid the fluff in your existing content and do a proper content audit before migrating. Not the one where you check just the broken links but the one where you make sure that your existing content isn’t ROT (redundant, outdated, and full of trivial content). Why would you import content no one needs?

    Have you just started with Kontent.ai?

    For Kontent.ai beginners, we recommend you go through the whole Set up Kontent.ai section. We will guide you through the initial Kontent.ai configuration. If you have more complex needs, we can offer our Customer Success Services to help you along the way.

    Check your web analytics to see your top content types and content items. Analyze how your current content serves these search queries and how it helps you achieve your goals.

    Another great activity is holding an internal content modeling workshop to see if your content model serves different channels, devices, and users. You might discover that you have great content for conversational interfaces, but you can’t use it because of the way it was modeled a few years back. Or that your content works well on a website but isn’t a good fit for voice interfaces or home assistants.

    Migration tools

    Importing to Kontent.ai can be done using one of the tools available for it.

    Pause your notifications

    Before you start the migration process, you might want to temporarily disable your webhooks. This way, you'll avoid receiving a lot of unnecessary notifications. Once you're done importing, make sure to enable webhooks again.

    • Kontent.ai CLI enables you to modify your Kontent.ai projects, including migrating existing content to Kontent.ai through the command line. You can also use it to modify your project’s content model. See the CLI scripts in action in our e-learning course.
    • Kontent.ai Backup Manager helps with backing up and restoring Kontent.ai projects.

    Management API

    For more complex migrations, use Management API. It gives you the flexibility of importing content with a more complicated structure and logic, which is typically the case when migrating higher volumes of content.

    Write a script or an application that will parse the content from its original format and send it to Kontent.ai in JSON. The original content can be in any format, for example:

    • A database from another CMS, such as WordPress
    • An XML file
    • A CSV file
    • A text file

    To enable Management API:

    1. In Environment settings, select API keys.
    2. On the Management API card, toggle the Inactive switch to activate the API.
    3. Copy the API key.

    You will use the API key to authenticate your requests.

    What's next?

    Choosing the right approach for importing content saves you time setting up Kontent.ai.