In 2024, we led the launch of Vanguardia and El Universal, two of Colombia’s most prestigious media outlets, through a migration project that combined technological modernization, unified structures, and operational optimization.
Both outlets were running on Iter CMS (by ProtecMedia). While the platform served its editorial purpose, the main challenge was the technical ceiling preventing their digital products from scaling. As is common with growing media groups, the legacy infrastructure had become a bottleneck for business evolution.
The decision was made to migrate to ArcXP as a next-generation platform. Simultaneously, the editorial teams opted for a joint strategy: unifying both digital ecosystems without losing brand identity, while sharing architecture, technical resources, and components.
Unlike other migrations, we found the content to be relatively well-structured. The primary challenge wasn't "data salvage," but rather redesigning the architecture so that two historically independent outlets could coexist on the same technical foundation, maximizing component reuse and operational efficiency.
Tech stack
The articles were delivered as a general database dump. From there, we reconstructed table relationships, normalized structures, and mapped the data to make it actionable within the new ecosystem.
The implemented architecture included:
- Fusion as the development framework
- React and JavaScript for the application layer
- MongoDB for storage of data external to ArcXP
- On-premise hosting for the redirection API, allowing the media groups to maintain full control over their infrastructure
- DataMorph, our proprietary data migration tool
- PageBuilder for structuring, page building, and editorial routing
This combination allowed us to build a flexible foundation, ready to scale and adapt to new business demands.
Migration process
The project relied on the evolution of DataMorph, our migration engine. In this implementation, we incorporated full automation for the migration of sections, tags, and authors—a critical point that historically led to data loss in traditional migrations.
In many legacy CMSs, these entities are not delivered in a complete or consistent manner. When that happens, manual recovery is costly and, in some cases, impossible. The automation we developed guaranteed editorial integrity, SEO structure preservation, and operational continuity from day one.
Our approach prioritized:
- Total content integrity
- Frictionless editorial continuity
- Reduced risk during go-live
- Technical validation at every stage of the process
Results
The migration allowed both outlets to:
- Unify infrastructure without losing brand identity
- Reduce operational complexity
- Accelerate development cycles
- Scale their architecture without the limitations of their previous CMS
- Preserve historical editorial and SEO structure
More importantly, the project delivered a platform prepared for growth, not just a replacement for the previous one.