NectarPress Migration Guide¶

Migrating from another theme carries the highest risk of SEO disruption. Read this guide fully before touching anything on a live site. Every migration should be done on a staging copy first.

Migration Principles¶

1. Staging first, always — migrate on staging.yourdomain.com, verify thoroughly, then apply to production during off-peak hours
2. Preserve URLs — changing URL patterns loses SEO ranking. Use redirects where URL structure must change
3. Export before starting — full database + uploads backup before making any changes
4. Verify with Search Console — connect Google Search Console before and after; watch for crawl errors for 2 weeks post-migration

Migrating from TagDiv Newspaper / JNews / Soledad¶

These themes store layout data in post meta and custom database tables. NectarPress has a different architecture, so you'll need to:

1. Export content (safe, non-destructive)¶

wp export --post_type=post,page,attachment --filename=content-export.xml

2. Identify and preserve custom URLs¶

# Get all post slugs from old site
wp post list --post_type=post --fields=post_name,ID --format=csv > old-slugs.csv

3. Install NectarPress on staging¶

Do not deactivate the old theme on production yet. Set up a staging copy: - Clone your production database + files - Install NectarPress on staging - Complete the setup wizard

4. Import content¶

If migrating from the same WordPress installation: - Your posts, pages, and media are already there - Only the theme-specific meta (slider settings, builder layouts) needs attention

If migrating from a different WordPress installation:

wp import content-export.xml --authors=create

5. Rebuild homepage layout¶

TagDiv and JNews store homepage layouts in their proprietary builder format. These don't translate to NectarPress. - Use NectarPress's Homepage Builder (Appearance → Homepage Builder) - Re-create your section structure using NectarPress's section types - This typically takes 1–2 hours for a typical news portal

6. Set up reporter profiles¶

NectarPress's reporter roles don't exist in other themes. For each author: 1. Go to Users → Edit User 2. Change role to Reporter (NectarPress) or appropriate role 3. Fill in the NectarPress Reporter Profile section

7. Redirects for URL changes¶

If your old theme used different URL structures:

# .htaccess example: old /category/rajniti/ was /rajniti/
Redirect 301 /rajniti/ /category/rajniti/

Or use the Redirection WordPress plugin for a UI-based approach.

8. Verify Schema.org markup¶

NectarPress adds NewsArticle schema automatically. Check with Google's Rich Results Test:

https://search.google.com/test/rich-results?url=https://yourdomain.com/your-post-slug/

Migrating from Magazine Pro / GeneratePress + Custom Builds¶

These are lighter themes without built-in newsroom features. The migration is simpler:

1. Your posts and taxonomy structure carries over unchanged
2. You likely don't have complex homepage builder data to migrate
3. Focus on: header layout, widget areas, color scheme, logo placement

NectarPress's Theme Options (20 tabs) covers all standard customization that was previously done via custom CSS or child theme modifications.

Migrating from Joomla (K2 / JoomNews)¶

High-level steps only — this migration requires custom scripting:

1. Export Joomla content to XML via K2 exporter or a custom MySQL dump
2. Write a migration script that creates WordPress posts from Joomla's content structure
3. Map authors: Joomla user IDs → WordPress user IDs
4. Map categories: Joomla section+category → WordPress category hierarchy
5. Import media: wp media import for migrated image files
6. Set up URL redirects: Joomla's URL pattern (/component/k2/item/123-slug) → WordPress (/year/month/slug/)

The FG Joomla to WordPress plugin automates much of this. After import, configure NectarPress normally.

Preserving SEO During Migration¶

Critical: don't change post slugs¶

WordPress post slugs (the URL-safe name in the URL) are what Google indexes. If your migration creates new post IDs with new slugs:

1. The old URLs 404 → Google loses ranking signals
2. Use 301 redirects from old URLs to new slugs
3. Keep redirect rules for at least 1 year (Google can take 6–12 months to fully process 301s on high-volume sites)

robots.txt¶

During migration, block the staging site:

# staging.yourdomain.com/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Remove this after migrating to production.

Sitemap¶

NectarPress generates a sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml (WordPress core) plus a News-specific sitemap at /wp-sitemap-posts-post-1.xml. Submit both to Google Search Console after migration.

Canonical URLs¶

If you had www / non-www inconsistency on the old site, migration is the time to standardize. Choose one and add a 301 redirect for the other in Nginx/Apache config (not .htaccess — do it at the server level for efficiency).

Bulk Content Import via WP-CLI¶

For importing large amounts of content from external sources (wire services, archives):

# Import from XML (standard WP export format)
wp import archive-2025.xml --authors=mapping.csv

# Import from JSON (custom format — requires custom importer plugin)
wp eval-file scripts/import-from-json.php --path=/var/data/archive.json

# Verify import counts
wp post list --post_type=post --post_status=publish --format=count
wp media list --format=count

After bulk import, rebuild the NectarPress demo import map if you need demo content alongside real content:

wp nectarpress demo import enterprise-daily --yes

Demo content coexists with real content — it uses different post meta to distinguish itself.