WordHerd successfully migrated the AKC Canine Health Foundation website from Blackbaud to WordPress, transforming thousands of pages, resources, records, and URLs into a flexible and highly structured content management system.
The project included approximately a dozen custom post types, extensive custom fields, complex content relationships, and continued Blackbaud integration for grant-related functionality and online donation forms.
AKC Canine Health Foundation
The AKC Canine Health Foundation is dedicated to improving the health of all dogs by funding scientific research and sharing information that helps prevent, treat, and cure canine diseases.
Its website serves a diverse audience that includes dog owners, breeders, veterinarians, researchers, donors, and organizations supporting canine health. The platform contains a substantial collection of research grants, health resources, program areas, investigator opportunities, news, publications, and educational content.
Migrating this information from Blackbaud required much more than transferring standard website pages. The existing platform contained thousands of interconnected pieces of content that needed to remain organized, searchable, and properly associated after the move to WordPress.
Our team developed a custom migration process that extracted, transformed, and imported thousands of content records and URLs into their appropriate locations within WordPress. Approximately a dozen custom post types were created to represent the organization’s different content structures, allowing each type of information to be managed independently while remaining connected throughout the website.
Custom fields were implemented to preserve the detailed data associated with each record. Relationships were then established between relevant content types, allowing grants, research programs, health topics, investigators, articles, and supporting resources to be dynamically connected.
This interconnected architecture enables visitors to move naturally between related information while giving the AKC Canine Health Foundation team a more efficient way to manage complex content from the WordPress dashboard. Updates made to one record can be reflected wherever that information appears, reducing duplicate entry and improving long-term content consistency.
The new website also maintains integration with Blackbaud for critical organizational functions. Grant-related workflows continue to connect with Blackbaud, while donation forms securely direct donor information and transactions through the organization’s established fundraising system.
By separating website content management from these specialized Blackbaud functions, the Foundation gained the flexibility of WordPress without disrupting the systems supporting its grant and fundraising operations.
Through this migration, the AKC Canine Health Foundation gained a scalable and user-friendly WordPress platform capable of supporting thousands of interconnected resources. The new architecture simplifies content management, improves the organization and discoverability of canine health information, and provides a strong foundation for future research, educational, and fundraising initiatives.
