Tip #60: Important Issues to Deal with when Moving Your Old Membership Site to a New One

One of the reasons for moving a live and active membership site to a new one is having the ability to grow and enhance the site, for example: moving from a very limited forum to a more flexible one, or moving from one membership platform to another.

Though moving a membership site can be very daunting and frightening, sometimes it is necessary for growing and maximizing your revenues.

In the last couple of months we have had several clients who moved their old membership site to a new one, so we decided to write some important issues you should deal with and how to deal with them to help you do it right and as smooth as possible.

4 Important Issues to Deal with when Moving to a New Membership Site

1. Moving Paying Members:

Moving members who already have an active subscription is more tricky to do as you will need to ask them to cancel their old subscription and create a new one, which may cause you to loose members on the way.

If you want to move paying members, we highly recommend to also read this tip:

Tip #46: How to Shift Paying Members from Membership Site A to Membership Site B?

2. Moving Gifted Members:

If you granted some members free access to your membership site, whether you sent them the registration link (not recommended as this link is not secured) or you have used a special coupon, you have 2 options to moving them to the new membership site:

1. You can manually add your members to the membership level, whether one by one or in bulk using Wishlist Member import members option

2. You can give your members a coupon that will give them 100% discount. You can create coupons using Wishlist Coupon 2.0 plugin.

If you are using an eCommerce platform, for example: WooCommerce you can use the platform’s coupon feature.

The first way is more user-friendly as it does not require them to do anything.

Both ways also apply for forum moderators who have free access.

3. Moving an Active Forum:

there is one big bump that we may encounter ans that is the forum information updating. Because you are transferring the forum on a specific date and members continue to post to the old forum, the information that you already imported is not up-to-date and you will lose the content from the date that you have imported the forum until you open the new site.

Maybe a better solution is to finish all the work on the website and only then import the information on the forum, but I have mixed feelings about it as I don’t know what will break G Converter will import the information and it will be very hard to debug a problem if we don’t know what has changed.

Another solution is to shut down the old website for a couple of days until G converter will complete the import and we will complete the entire structure. The problem with that is that customers will not love it and it is giving us a very tight schedule to work with and solve any problems that may occur during the process.

4. Hiring More than One Company for Moving the Membership Site:

If you are hiring more than one company to do the migration of the old membership site to the new one it is highly important to make sure all sides will work seamlessly together so there will not be any issues or double work.

For example: if one company is responsible for transferring your membership site, including flow and structure, and another company is responsible for transferring your members’ forum, it’s important that you supervise the project and let each side know at what point they should take over.

5 Latest Wishlist Member Dedicated Tips

• Tip #55: How to Protect Your Videos to be Viewed by Members Only
• Tip #56: Monthly vs. Annual Subscription – Which is More Converting?
• Tip #57: Allowing Members to Cancel Their Membership On Their Own – Yes or No?
• Tip #58: Free vs. Paid Trial Period for Your Membership Site
• Tip #59: Important Tips for Using Security Plugins with Wishlist Member

Newest Wishlist Member Dedicated Plugins

• Wishlist bbPress Protection – Protect all bbPress forums, topics and replies automatically and in just 1-click!
• Wishlist Drip Dynamic Shortcodes – Display / hide content based on registration date, time period & membership level using powerful dynamic shortcodes
• Wishlist Member WooCommerce Plus – Integrate Wishlist Member & WooCommerce Quickly & Easily Better Than Any Existing Integration
• Wishlist Auto Protect Pro – Protect / unprotect content automatically in any period of time & increase your conversion rates

All Wishlist Member Dedicated Plugins

We have created a complete repository of Wishlist Member dedicated plugins developed by both Wishlist Products, the company behind Wishlist Member plugin, themselves and by 3rd-party companies such as HappyPlugins.com (our online store for eCommerce & Membership Products).

In the repository you will find different types of plugins, including:

• Content Plugins – Get more control over your membership site’s content, enhance it and make it even more powerful using these powerful content plugins
• Members Plugins – Create a thriving community, increase your members’ satisfaction and engagement using these powerful plugins
• Registration Plugins – Increase the number of registrations to your membership site and prevent cancellations using these powerful registration plugins
• Administration Plugins – Manage your membership site’s structure and design to empower it for your members using these administration plugins
• Affiliates Plugins – Maximize your membership site’s revenues by offering a powerful affiliate resources and tools for your affiliates using these plugins
• Wishlist Member & WooCommerce Plugins – Integrate your Wishlist Member membership site with WooCommerce platform quickly and easily in just i-click!
• Wishlist Member bbPress Integration – Protect both new and existing topics and replies within the bbPress forums using Wishlist Member protection settings
• Wishlist Dedicated Guides – Premium guides about membership sites in general and Wishlist Member in particular to enhance your membership site

You May Find These Posts Interesting:

Tip #59: Important Tips for Using Security Plugins with Wishlist Member

Tip #58: Free vs. Paid Trial Period for Your Membership Site

Tip #40: Should You Add a Forum to Your Membership Site or Not?

Tip #36: Should You Build Your Membership Site on a Separate Domain on Not?

Tip #32: Top 10 Powerful Wishlist Member Dedicated Plugins to Empower Your Membership Site

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