Pre-Migration Checklist
When a u3a (or Network/Region) with a Site Builder site joins the SiteWorks programme and the Web Manager has been trained, they will be allocated a member of the Migration team. At this stage they will have the opportunity to take an export from Site Builder to help assess how to proceed.
These points and actions will ensure that the Site Builder site migration goes as smoothly as possible and minimises the editing required to finalise the initial SiteWorks website.
General Planning
Before undertaking any migration process, the Web Manager (site content creation and maintenance), together with their committee, should undertake a critical review of the current site and ask a number of fundamental questions as to the purpose, scope and contents of the website.
- Consider how the design of the new site, reflects the u3a going forward. Some features in Site Builder (e.g., sidebars and scrolling banner), are not available in WordPress or SiteWorks but have equivalents.
- A website is not a document repository, hence review the material that will be migrated, for example how much of the newsletters and meeting archives actually need to be transferred.
- If the committee would like to change the u3a name part of the URL this should be discussed. For example, if your u3a is ”Blueberry and District” and your Site Builder URL is u3asites.org.uk/blueberrydistrict then instead of blueberrydistrict.u3asite.uk it could be just be blueberry.u3asite.uk when hosted on SiteWorks.
Migration Limitations
Note the following points:
- Site Builder Colour scheme, Banner Message, Links to Google Calendar and YouTube Videos are not migrated.
- The Gallery page is not migrated, but all media elements will be.
- Text marked as a centred heading in Site Builder { … } is converted to a HTML level 3 heading in SiteWorks. Headings are automatically rendered in bold font. If in Site Builder you use the bold markup # … # in combination with the { … } heading markup, the heading text will be rendered in ”bold bold” in the new site which can look rather ugly.
This can be corrected either in Site Builder before migration or in your new site after migration. The use of the Site Builder bold markup # … # in regular text causes no issues. - The ampersand, &, is a reserved character within the code used to migrate sites, hence can cause problems both for exporting data from Site Builder and for importing it into WordPress. The migration process is more reliable when ampersands are avoided. Consider replacing the & symbol with ’and’ within a page or group names.
Checklist Detail
The checklist details specific actions or points to note. The order is that of the Site Builder main menu.
Check the u3a Site Profile (under Utilities), to ensure that there are no unmatched links. If a link is unmatched, it should be corrected or removed by editing the relevant page.
| ADMIN MENU | Check the u3a Site Profile (under Utilities), to ensure that there are no unmatched links. If a link is unmatched, it should be corrected or removed by editing the relevant page. |
| GROUPS | Use the Site Builder Groups menu to review your groups and remove any that do not required migration to the new site. If a group is marked with a status of ’Hide’ it will be migrated and given a publication status of ’draft’ in SiteWorks. Check the contents of any in-line emails contacts, to ensure they are required. |
| EVENTS | Remove any Events that you don’t want migrated, but if an event’s details are used as a template for future meetings, temporarily reset the date to somewhere in the future if required so that it will be migrated. Ensure that the first line of the event details in Site Builder contains only the title of the event. |
| CONTACT | Edit or remove any contact, as required. Make sure that each email address has a unique label associated with it. For example, if graham@anyu3a.org.uk leads a Bridge Group and suewalker@anyu3a.org.uk the Walking Group, then don’t use the label ‘Leader’ for both groups. Make the labels unique e.g. ‘Leader Bridge’ and ‘Leader Walks’. If this is not done then only one of the email addresses will be migrated to SiteWorks (but can be added back in SiteWorks). The Migration process will take the listed contact details for each Group and set them as Group Leaders for the migrated site. |
| LINKS | From the Links menu, edit or remove any invalid or unused links. Remove any non-u3a logos with links as these will not be migrated. Ensure any email set to ’in-line only’ should either be removed or set to ‘not in-line only’. |
| PAGES | Edit or remove any pages, as required. You can do this after migration. If a page has little or no text, the page should be removed. Ensure that pages do not contain visible email addresses unless it is the intention that they should be shown publicly and that doing so does not contravene the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Check that any URLs in the text are correct. In-line links (i.e. those using | name of page or document |) should be checked to ensure they link to the intended target page. |
| NAVIGATION MENUS | Under the ‘Admin Menu > Buttons > Change Buttons’ check they are all desired for the migrated site. |
| PICTURES | Check the Pictures menu to ensure that links to missing pictures are either removed (using the Remove links to missing pictures option), or the picture is uploaded, if required, by ‘Add picture’ or ‘Upload file’. |
| GALLERY BUTTON | If your site shows the standard Gallery button, de-activate it temporarily (use the ‘Buttons > Change Buttons’ option under the Admin Menu) until there is once again a good correspondence between links and uploaded pictures. |
| FILES | Check the Files menu ensure that links to missing files are either removed (using Remove links to missing files), or the file is uploaded. |
| USER ROLES | These are not transferred so can be ignored. |
| PASSWORD PROTECTION | Site Builder provides a facility to have a username plus password protected single folder where uploaded files can be stored. Files in this folder will not migrate and fresh copies will need to be uploaded to SiteWorks. If individual files have been password protected by applications, such as office files, PDFs and zip files, then these will be migrated as WordPress Media items along with their passwords. |
| NOT TRANSFERRED | The following will NOT transferred to the new site: – Site Builder colour scheme/fonts etc. – Site Builder Banner Message – Site Builder Customisations – Links to Google Calendar and YouTube Videos |
Checklist Summary
| ACTION | CONFIRM |
| Remove inactive groups | |
| Remove events not required after migration | |
| Remove unwanted contact details and verify remaining contact details are correct | |
| Confirm all documents and pictures required for migration are present and remove any media not required | |
| Check top level pages, and remove any that are not required. | |
| Check for, and remove any links that have no attached media | |
| Deactivate the Gallery option | |
| Check details of the editors are correct |
Updated 2024-07-28 by Graham Tigg to include extra points from the User Guide version.