Best practice for moving assets in AEM

[PrashantKu11]

1. Best practice and guidance?

2. Risk and issues for moving published assets?

[giuseppebag]

1) If you are discussing the ingestion of large amounts of images, you can take a look at my post here where I gathered some useful information.

2) When published assets are moved, URLs change. If pages still point to the old path, visitors may encounter broken links or missing images. AEM may attempt to update links automatically if permissions allow, but discrepancies can occur. Besides, moving assets in a live environment can overload the replication queue, leading to delays. This may cause temporary inconsistencies between the author and published instances.

[AmitVishwakarma]

Hi @PrashantKu11 ,

Best Practices for Moving Assets in AEM

1. Best Practices & Guidance:

     - Plan Before Moving: Assess the impact on existing references, workflows, and publishing status.
     - Use AEM’s Move Operation: Always use AEM’s built-in Move function to ensure proper reference updates.
     - Check Dependencies: Validate asset references in pages, components, and workflows before moving.
     - Enable Link Updating: Ensure "Update References" is enabled when moving assets to prevent broken links.
     - Test in Lower Environments: Validate asset movement in a non-production environment before executing in production.

2. Risks & Issues When Moving Published Assets:

     - Broken Links: If references are not updated, existing pages and components may still point to the old path.
     - Replication Queue Overload: Moving multiple published assets at once may flood the replication queue, causing delays.
     - Cache Inconsistencies: Published instances may still serve old asset paths due to caching mechanisms (Dispatcher/CDN).
     - Permissions & Ownership Issues: If users lack proper permissions, AEM may fail to update all references.
     - SEO Impact: If assets are externally linked, moving them can break SEO rankings unless redirects are implemented.

Mitigation Strategies:

     - Enable "Update References" to minimize broken links.
     - Monitor the Replication Queue to prevent bottlenecks.
     - Clear Dispatcher/CDN Cache after moving assets.
     - Use Redirect Rules for SEO preservation (e.g., via Apache rules or AEM Redirect Manager).
     - Test & Communicate with content authors and stakeholders before moving critical assets.

Regards,
Amit

[MickelCl]

At SEO for Lawyers, we always back up every URL on a website before migrating to a new CMS or domain.

Creating a complete backup of URLs and content ensures your data is safe and allows for easy verification if any URLs fail to restore correctly during the migration process.

For example, last year, a law firm needed to move their website to a new hosting provider. Before initiating the migration, we downloaded the entire database and all website content to ensure a smooth, loss-free transition.