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Migrating To Breakdance

If you’re looking to migrate from another builder or theme to Breakdance, we highly recommend using Migration Mode or redesigning your site on a staging site first before updating your live site, these methods will be discussed further below. Please note that Breakdance does not include any built-in tools to convert your current designs from another builder or theme automatically.

Working with a Staging Site

Working with a staging site while redesigning your website is the recommended process. This will allow you to modify and edit designs and layouts without impacting your live site.

Complete Site Migration

All-in-One WP Migration

If you’re working on a site that won’t have any new content added to it from the time you create your staging site to the time the site goes live, you can use a plugin such as All-in-One WP Migration or use any staging site tools provided by your hosting provider.

After your staging site is set up, you can then begin designing your site as desired.

When your design is complete, you can use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin to move your new site back to your live site or use the staging tools provided by your hosting provider.

Other Migration Plugins

If you are using another plugin to migrate your site, you may need to run the following steps after the site has been migrated:

  1. Go to Breakdance > Settings > Tools in WordPress Admin
  2. Run the URL Replacement tool.
  3. Run the Create Directories tool.
  4. Click the Regenerate CSS Cache tool.

Sometimes, you may find that URLs are still using the old URL, in this case, we recommend using the Better Search Replace plugin to replace those URLs. Please note that as Breakdance stores some of its data in JSON format, you may wish to search for “https:\/\/” in the site URL, as well as “https://“. Please ensure you change the site URL to your old and new URLs.

Utilizing a Design Set

If you are only moving Breakdance content from your staging site to your live site, you may want to convert your staging site into a Design Set. When utilizing the Full Site Import Enabled option, you’ll be able to import your Global Settings, Design Presets, Breakdance Settings, Breakdance Templates, Headers, Footers, and Popups from your Design Set site. It will also import any Posts or Pages you’ve edited within Breakdance. Learn more about Design Sets.

Using the WordPress Importer

If you’d prefer to not use a Design Set, you can use the default WordPress Importer to move the various Breakdance post types:

Part One: Staging Site

  • On the staging site (the site you want to copy Breakdance designs from), go to Tools > Export in the WordPress Admin panel.
  • Then, for each of the following post types, perform an export and save the XML files that WordPress creates: Global Blocks, Headers, Footers, Popups, Templates.
  • Next, while still on the staging site, go to Breakdance > Settings in the WordPress Admin panel and navigate to the Tools tab. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Download Export File to save Breakdance’s settings in a JSON file.

Part Two: Live Site

Before doing anything on the live site, perform a full backup of the site. Your hosting provider may have this service readily available to you, or you may need to do it manually. We highly recommend that you do not proceed without performing a backup.

  • After the backup is complete, go to Tools > Import in the WordPress Admin panel. Then, click on the Run Importer tool.
  • Next, import the XML files that you ran for each post type from the staging site. Please note that when running the importer, you will want to check the Download and import file attachments option under Import Attachments.
  • Following the completion of importing your post types, go to Breakdance > Settings and navigate to the Tools tab. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Choose file under Import Settings, select the JSON file, then click the Upload Export JSON File.
  • Finally, once the settings have been imported, click on the Regenerate CSS Cache tool in Breakdance’s settings.

Using Migration Mode

Breakdance’s Migration Mode plugin allows you to rebuild and test your site with Breakdance without affecting your live site for visitors. Breakdance will only be active for specified IP addresses, enabling a smooth and secure setup process. Learn more about Migration Mode.