Transferring Total CMS Data from one server to another.

Do you need to transfer CMS Data from one server to another? There are many reasons why you might need to do this, but if you follow these instructions, you will be able to do this with out issue.

First thing you need, is an FTP App. Does not matter which one, as long as you can login to your server and see all of your files. You need to copy the cms-data folder from the server that Total CMS is currently onto the new server you want to use. Now, if at all possible, copy the cms-data folder over to the new server BEFORE you publish your site to it. When you publish your site, the cms-data folder might get created, and you would have to delete it. Below is a screenshot of what a site might look like on your server. You will see that the cms-data folder is at the root of the server (or where you home page is kept).

The cms-data folder will contain different things depending on what you have saved for content, so I am not going to show you what the inside of that folder looks like, just copy the entire folder over to the new server. If you do this before publishing, it should look something like this:

The next thing you need to do is to publish your RapidWeaver project to the new server. Once you do this, the site will be done, at least it all of the content will show, but if you are using the Blog aspect of Total CMS, you will need to do one more thing. You must go to the Blog Post page. You need to go to the Blog Post page inside RapidWeaver and preview that page again. When you do, you should see a lightbox appear and you will need to resubmit the URL.

Once you click on submit, you have one last thing to do. While in preview, go to the blog admin page where you have the Admin Blog List stack. Click on any of your current blog posts. Make a small change (delete a period and put it back) and save the blog post. This is to update the URLs stored inside the blog files and are used to create RSS and Blog Lists.

Now your transfer of your CMS data is complete.

Now go forth and make your websites great!f