Migrating legacy fields

Now that version 5 is out, I thought it was time to revisit this topic (almost exactly a year later, I just noticed!). Obviously, you have kept busy with other features and changes this year, but as I recall there was talk of providing some kind of migration path. Has anything more come of this?

Hi Linda,

We have a script in beta that can help 90%+ sites to migrate the new architecture. However this: “as well as consolidating duplicate fields – body, tags, etc – into one copy that can reside in a shared field group” is difficult, since each field’s settings also would have to match, and further, all references to the older fields in templates would need to be updated. It can be error prone if a site has hundreds of custom fields, many of which the current site maintainer doesn’t know exactly what they’re used by or where. Add third-party add-ons that manage or use their own custom fields for another layer of difficulty.

If you know your site well, it might be easier to create a new field and copy content from old fields into your new one(s) manually, and update the templates as needed.

Ah, yes of course, I did not consider the settings. In my case, the ones that use my standard setup (body, extended text, tags) use identical settings, but of course that would not be the case for everyone.

I do know my structure well, but the issue with doing it manually is the amount of data. We’re talking 10+ years of content over 20+ channels.

I should add that I would definitely be interested in at least testing the script when you’re at the stage of allowing that. With proper backups done first, of course!