Mapping Craft CMS Sections and Fields Before a Migration

Craft CMS is popular with teams that care about structured content. Instead of a single blob of page text, editors work with sections, entry types and fields designed around the business. That design work is valuable, and the goal of any migration should be to carry it forward rather than flatten it.

Understand the building blocks

Before mapping anything, it helps to name what you are looking at:

• Sections group entries. Singles hold one-off pages such as a home page, channels hold streams such as news, and structures hold hierarchies such as a services tree.
• Entry types define the fields available within a section.
• Fields hold individual pieces of content: plain text, rich text, dates, dropdowns, relations and more.
• Matrix-style fields let editors stack flexible blocks, often used for page building.
• Asset volumes store images and files, sometimes with their own fields such as alt text or credits.
• Categories and tags organise content for filtering and listing.
• Globals hold site-wide values such as footer text or contact details.

Produce a content model document

For each section, record its type, its entry types, every field with its field type and whether it is required, and how URLs are formed. Note any relations, for example a case study that links to a service entry. Craft's project configuration files can help here because they describe much of this structure in a readable form, but a human summary is still worth writing.

Translate field types deliberately

Most Craft field types have a reasonable equivalent elsewhere, but the mapping is a decision, not a lookup:

1. Plain text and numbers usually map directly.
2. Rich text may contain embedded references, links to entries or custom styles that need cleaning.
3. Relation fields become references between documents or records in the new system.
4. Matrix blocks typically become a list of typed components, each with its own fields.
5. Dropdowns and checkboxes need their option lists carried over exactly so filtering keeps working.

Treat assets as content

Images in Craft often carry focal points, transforms and metadata. Decide how image sizes will be generated in the new stack, whether focal point data should be preserved, and how alt text will move. Files referenced by URL from other websites belong in the redirect plan.

Check templates for hidden logic

Twig templates sometimes contain business rules: which entries appear on a listing, how fallback images are chosen, or which fields are shown to certain audiences. Read the templates for the most important pages and write those rules down. They are easy to miss because they never appear in the control panel.

Consider editor workflows

Drafts, revisions, entry previews and scheduled publishing are part of how your team works. Document which of these they rely on and how often. If the new setup keeps Craft as a content backend with a modern front end, much of this stays familiar. If it replaces Craft with another CMS, plan training and a short trial with real editors.

Multi-site and localisation

If the installation serves several sites or languages, record which sections are shared, which are translated and how translations relate to each other. Language-specific URLs need their own entries in the redirect plan.

The outcome

A clear map of sections, fields and relations lets a migration preserve what makes your Craft site useful: structured, reusable content. It also exposes fields nobody uses, which is a rare chance to simplify before rebuilding.