Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Migrate a site to Genesis
- This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 11 months ago by Brad Dalton.
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April 11, 2013 at 4:59 am #34700CallevaMember
Hi - I've a simple question (I think), but although I've searched around, I haven't come up with the answer - yet!
I have an existing WordPress site & blog, currently not using the Genesis framework/child theme. It's got a number of existing pages (35) & posts (20).
What's the best way to activate the Genesis framework and theme (I purchased the Executive one for starters) on an existing site?
On a test system, I tried out just uploading/activating the themes and whilst this worked, the formatting of the site needs work - shortcodes from the old them are not interpreted and need removing/changing; things have moved around.
Is it typical just to activate the themes and fix what's broken? Or should I start from a clean WordPress install and do some kind of import into the new site (I've seen there is a wordpress export/import feature, but have never used it)?
Any tips welcome ! Thanks.
April 11, 2013 at 5:29 am #34704Gary JonesMemberAll content-based shortcodes should have been built as part of a plugin, not the theme, for the exact reason you've discovered. If they aren't, and you're not a developer, then you should be able to hire someone to do it - it's not a big job (allow an hour).
Whether you activate on the live site, or have got the resources to play on a subdomain / some other test site first, really depends on your site. If you've only got one or two family and friends visiting it, then just activate on the live site and fix as needed. If you've got 1000 visitors a day, then use a test site elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Genesis and child themes doesn't yet support the WP Customizer, where you'd be able to tweak and preview the theme before fully activating it. Hopefully this will come in the next major release after the upcoming 2.0 (which of course won't help you now, but may be of interest to others who read this thread).
WordPress does have an export and import that handles all of your content. On the receiving site (test site before doing the tweaks, back to live site afterwards) you may need to set up menus and widgets again.
You may also want to look into BackupBuddy, which can handle all of this (including amending site links in content - a common issue when migrating a site) and more.
WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ
April 11, 2013 at 5:41 am #34708CallevaMemberGary - thanks for the reply. Our site is a company website, so I would plan on using a test site to "rebuild" it, rather than playing with the live site.
We currently use blogvault to backup/restore and this has worked fine, but obviously when I restore it to the test site, everything gets restored. As well as doing a theme upgrade, I wanted to also take the opportunity to redesign the layout, etc.
My original thoughts was to start from a fresh WordPress install, but this would mean having to re-create the content. I wondered if there was a way to keep/restore the content, but leave out the old theme-related stuff, plugins, etc. But perhaps it is easier just to restore the full site and resolve the issues.
April 11, 2013 at 9:32 am #34741CallevaMemberHave done a bit more research and it looks like the wordpress export/import may be my friend here - just to grab the content. So, I'm going to run up a fresh wordpress install on our test site, install Genesis + child theme, then import content from our live site. And then get tweaking !
April 11, 2013 at 9:59 am #34750Brad DaltonParticipantIf you're migrating to a new server or domain, try installing the WP Migrate DB plugin and enter the new server path and domain which may be a local installation of WordPress. Instantwp.com is the easiest way to install WordPress locally for Windows users or MAMP for Mac.
It's not a bad idea to use the WordPress export/import tool rather then import the DB as long as you don't mind losing your plugin settings.
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