Chippewa County: Two Wix Sites Merged Into One Site the County Owns
Live since October 19, 2026
Chippewa County, Michigan: Municipal Website Migration
The Result
On October 19, 2026, Chippewa County, Michigan launched a single public website at www.chippewacountymi.gov. It replaced two Wix sites: the County site at chippewacountymi.gov and the Health Department site at chippewahd.com.
The new site belongs to the County. It runs on ClaraYet CMS, every old URL from both legacy sites redirects to its new page, and County staff publish through role-based permissions and a Draft, Review, Publish workflow.
WAM DevTech won the work after building a working system for the County's RFP evaluation. That earlier stage is described in From RFP to Running Platform.
The Problem With a Closed Platform
The hard problem was not design. Neither legacy site offered a way to export its content into another system. There was no file to download and import.
So the content had to be recovered from the pages visitors see: the text, the documents linked from each page, and the images, rebuilt as structured content that County staff could maintain.
How the Migration Worked
Crawl
We read the published pages on both legacy sites and captured their text, linked documents, and images.
Transform
Each page was converted into structured content that fits the new site's page types and its merged navigation.
Load
Content, documents, and images were loaded into ClaraYet CMS and cleaned up against the legacy originals. County staff kept publishing on the old sites during the project, so late changes were carried across before launch.
Redirect
Every old address on both sites was mapped to its new page, so bookmarks, printed links, and search results still land in the right place.
Where AI Proposed and People Decided
AI handled the volume: reading legacy pages, proposing where each one belonged in the new structure, and drafting cleanup.
People made the decisions: the navigation of the merged site, which pages to combine, and what to leave alone. Where the legacy sites held duplicate or conflicting pages, the choice went to the County rather than being made for it.
What the County Owns, and How Cutover Worked
The County owns its site and its content. WAM DevTech provides managed hosting and support, and County staff received training and help documentation for day-to-day publishing.
The cutover was designed so County IT kept control of the County's own DNS throughout. The switch to the new site happened on the County's terms, and the domain never left the County's hands.
Accessibility: Where It Started
Before the migration, we crawled both legacy sites on June 1, 2026 and checked every page with automated accessibility tools. Of 335 pages, 253 on the County site and 82 on the Health Department site, none passed cleanly. Color contrast was the dominant issue.
An audit of the live site is pending. We will publish the results when it is complete, rather than describe the new site's accessibility before it has been measured.
Moving Your Government Website?
Leave a rented platform for a site you own, with every old address carried over.