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j Can I migrate from a non Site Builder site

Update September 2024. The SiteWorks team will be focusing on migrating the remaining Site Builder sites for the rest of the year. For u3as, Networks and Regions without a Site Builder site we currently have team capacity to offer SiteWorks sites, but this is subject to ongoing review.

There are currently no supported ways to automate moving a non Site Builder site to SiteWorks on the Trust’s hosting service. The most reliable method is largely manual working with an empty “Starter Site”. Content can be copied and pasted into individual SiteWorks pages but will require a degree of tidying up. The Import facility will be a time saver if data such as Groups and Venues is available as a spreadsheet, for example exported from Beacon or similar membership system.

Where the source site is already a SiteWorks site there are still some technical challenges:

  • The SiteWorks production build includes various plugins such as the MainWP management plugin that needs configuring by the SiteWorks System admin team.  The management plugin also relies on the existence of a ‘SwDevAdmin’ WordPress user with a unique password per site known only to the system admin team.
  • Email can only be sent successfully from a SiteWorks hosted site if the relevant definitions are set up in the main WordPress configuration file. Some WordPress migration tools will overwrite this file.
  • Some WordPress migration plugins assume the web manager has access to the file system or to the database server to directly upload or manipulate files,  This is not available with SiteWorks hosting.

An experienced WordPress administrator who understands these issues could request a “Starter” site which has all the above setup done correctly and then use various mechanisms to migrate content from another source.  But if their migration fails for any reason, all the system admin team would offer is to reinstall the “Starter” site. The u3a WordPress developers forum https://u3awpdev.org.uk (requires registration) can offer advice. There is also an article on moving site in the Web Manager > Blog.

The SiteWorks team recognise more assistance could be offered to move a SiteWorks site, but the current priority is to build up the migration programme to production volumes.