Should you migrate at all?

Not necessarily. Score your current site against eight things (editorial independence, content model, performance, accessibility, SEO resilience, compliance posture, integration health, operational risk) on a 1 to 5 scale. Under 20 out of 40, the platform is the problem and a migration is the cheaper fix over a three-year horizon. Over 30, keep what you have and fix the specific items. In between, it depends on which items are low, and I'll tell you how to read that below. A rebuild is expensive and disruptive; it should be the conclusion of an honest audit, not the starting assumption.

I sell migrations, so you should hold this chapter to a higher standard than the rest. The reason I can afford to be honest here is that a bad-fit migration is a bad project for me too.

What is the site actually failing at?

Usually one of two things: the team can't change it without a developer, or it broke something last time it was touched. Everything else is a symptom of those.

Before scoring anything, write down the three most recent times the site got in the way. Not "it's slow" in the abstract; the actual incidents. The new location page that took three weeks. The form that legal found out about. The redesign that lost a third of the search traffic. Those three stories tell you which rows below matter most, and they're what you'll use to explain the decision to whoever signs it off.

How do you score it?

Eight areas, each scored 1, 3, or 5, where 5 means there's nothing to do. Use the middle score when you're between descriptions. Be harsh; the score is for you.

• Editorial independence. 1: a developer is needed for any change. 3: pages are editable, structure isn't; a new section or page type needs a ticket. 5: the marketing team ships pages and sections unaided.
• Content model. 1: page-builder soup, every page a one-off, nothing reused. 3: some structured types (a provider or location type exists) but most pages are freeform. 5: structured and reusable; a provider or location entered once appears everywhere it should.
• Performance. 1: Core Web Vitals red on mobile in field data. 3: mixed. 5: green field data and a budget that keeps it that way.
• Accessibility. 1: serious WCAG failures on core templates (unlabelled forms, keyboard traps, no alternatives for media). 3: AA gaps on some templates. 5: AA, tested, with an accessibility statement.
• SEO resilience. 1: no redirect discipline, thin or duplicate metadata, no idea what ranks. 3: the basics are present. 5: structured data, canonicals, and a process for redirects when things move.
• Compliance posture. 1: health details in forms or analytics, no consent gate. 3: consent banner present, with gaps (tags fire before consent, free-text forms go to a marketing CRM). 5: PHI kept out by design, consent-aware tags.
• Integration health. 1: undocumented and brittle; nobody knows what happens when the scheduling widget changes. 3: documented, some fragility. 5: documented, owned, monitored.
• Operational risk. 1: a single vendor holds the keys, no backups, no runbook. 3: partial. 5: accounts in your name, backups tested, a runbook someone else could follow.

Add them up.

What does the total mean?

Under 20: migrate. Over 30: don't. Between: read the rows, not the total.

Under 20. Low scores across the board mean the platform and the way it was built are the cause, not any single feature. Remediating in place would cost a meaningful share of a rebuild and leave the structure untouched, so you'd be back here in two years. Plan the migration, and use the low rows as its requirements list.

Over 30. The site is in better shape than the rebuild conversation implies. Something specific is wrong, and the total tells you it's fixable in place. Fix the one or two low rows, keep the platform, and put the budget toward content or conversion instead. If a vendor pitches a rebuild at this score, ask them to show you which rows change.

20 to 30. This is most sites, and the rows that are low decide it. Low editorial independence and content model scores point to migration, because those are structural: a page-builder site doesn't become a structured one through remediation. Low performance, accessibility, or compliance scores with decent structure point to remediation, because those are fixable on any platform by someone competent. Low operational risk is urgent either way and shouldn't wait for a migration decision.

When is WordPress fine?

When the team can publish what they need to, the structure matches the content, and nobody is afraid to touch it.

WordPress runs a large share of healthcare sites and plenty of them are fine. A well-built WordPress site with a sensible custom-post-type structure, a small plugin footprint, good hosting, and someone who maintains it can score 30 or better on the rubric. If that's you, this playbook still has useful chapters (redirects, compliance, accessibility apply to any platform) but the migration chapters don't, and I'd rather you spent the money elsewhere.

The WordPress sites that score under 20 are usually not WordPress problems. They're page-builder problems, plugin-accumulation problems, and "the agency that built it is gone" problems. Migrating fixes those because it forces a rebuild of the structure, not because the new platform is magic. Be clear about which one you're buying.

What if you can't score it yourself?

Then that's the first finding: nobody on your side knows how the site works, and that's an operational risk score of 1 on its own.

You can get the score two ways. Have someone technical you trust spend a day with the rubric, the analytics account, and the CMS; that's enough for a rough but honest number. Or pay for an assessment, which is the same rubric done properly, with evidence for each score and a plan and a price at the end. I do those at a fixed fee, and the report is yours to use with any vendor, including your current one. Either way, get the number before anyone quotes you a rebuild.

Checklist

• Write down the three most recent times the site got in the way
• Score all eight areas, 1 / 3 / 5, harshly
• Under 20: plan the migration; low rows are the requirements
• Over 30: fix the specific rows in place; decline the rebuild pitch
• 20 to 30: structural rows low means migrate; fixable rows low means remediate
• Operational risk at 1: fix now, regardless of the migration decision
• Can't score it: that's the finding; get someone to score it before anyone quotes a build

No starter code for this chapter. The rubric is the same one used in the Dock90 assessment.