How to migrate from Twenty Twenty-Three to Twenty Twenty-Four?

Hi there,

Have you tried to copy/paste it from Twenty Twenty-Three to Twenty Twenty-Four?

You could even open the code editor to make it easier:

Full Size: https://d.pr/i/pwTyIi

The idea from @foosantos is impractical. There could be manycustomized pages, and you would have to copy everything to an external place (editor) and then copy everything back.

What is the best practice to keep the built pages from one Gutenberg theme for the next one. Each Gutenberg Themes starts with its own built pages. Is there an export somewhere for the customized Gutenberg Theme? (e.g twenty-twenty-three) and then I can import this into twenty-twenty-four? This would also solve migrations from localhost or a stage to production.

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by Marc Toensing.

When you have created everything in the template editor, you currently can’t migrate these to a new theme. This is a known problem and currently being discussed how to solve it.

The best option would be if you copy everything from your template into a page and set this page as your home page in General -> Reading to preserve it and be able to switch the theme without “loosing” your content.

But what about all other pages like categories, single and so on? And customized blocks like “code”? There are so many block customizations that should carry over.

Hi @luminuu,
I thought that the recommended thing to do is to use the template editor instead of using the “old” way of creating pages, Am I’m wrong?
When creating a WordPress site shouldn’t I use the template editor?

@foosantos do you suggest copying the code from the template editor to the template editor in the new theme or should I create a page from the code i’m copying?

Thanks.

Hi all,

I’m with @ramf on this one, I’ve also created a bunch of simple but elegegant sites on the new WordPress, with the Twenty Twenty Three theme. Switching to TT4 drops the entire site essentially ??

I guess that is what it is, I’ve put TT3 back to active and the sites return…but, what do WordPress actually have in mind for this transition? Am I missing something here or any communication on it? Is Twenty Twenty Four just for brand new users or is there a way to transition, or some sort of thought about this before they released it…?

Confusing. I have really loved using Twenty Twenty Three but would love more communication on this process.

Changing from Twenty Twenty Three to Twenty Twenty Four (or back) works correctly on my three separate websites, although I’ve had to make minor template changes to ensure logo display. As such, you (davidhc) and ranf should inspect the failing template/page in the block list view of edit mode to ascertain what is or is not displaying correctly. In addition, because it seems you are experiencing a such a fundamental failure (i.e., “…drops the entire site”), you might try basic WordPress website troubleshooting, such as disabling plugins, etc.

Also, you might review the tutorials at Tutorials | Learn WordPress for ideas to investigate your specific theme issues.

Hi @harry-hobbes
You mentioned that you were able to change the theme without a problem – are you using the template editor or do you use the “old” way of creating pages?

Now there is only one “Editor” that is used to edit all posts (content or structure), pages (content or structure), templates, or patterns.  Should you attempt to edit posts or pages “the old way,” that single editor is invoked. This means that should you attempt to edit either posts or pages from the Administration Menu, that Editor is invoked: the single site Editor. (This is referred to as the “Full Site Editor.”)

Indeed, you can access all of your pages from the “Appearance” -> “Editor” -> “Design” -> “Pages” menu path. Or, you can access those same pages “the old way” from the “Pages” entry on the Administration Menu.

That singular Editor is accessible either way and performs all edits.

It’s a bit confusing, because the editor can edit many “basic templates/layouts”. Blog home, single posts, pages, Index. Which one to chose to edit the whole site.
Index template days it would be used if no specific template is defined. How and where can you define that?

The way to use pages to solve this is from my understanding, a dead end and a deprecated way to use wordpress. And this would only work for the homepage but not for “single” and so on.

A simple solution would be to decouple (disconnect) the theme from the template editor. I think that all official block themes are forward compatible. Maybe this could even be solved with a plugin: “migrate edited templates from the editor to the new theme” or in short:

Template Editor to Theme Migrator Plugin

This would just copy all templates from theme x to theme y.

Thank you.
Would that also work to copy templates from twenty-seventeen to twenty-twentyfour?
In twenty-seventeen I use a child theme

The plugin is just an idea of mine. I would assume that you select the template editor templates (e.g. Homepage, Single Archive) from a list that should be copied from a selected theme to another selected theme.

@harry-hobbes – we tried the Theme update on a single page website. When we say the website ‘dropped’, we mean going front end for this website there’s an entirely new Twenty Twenty Four themed generic homepage, not the one specified in Twenty Twenty Three. Maybe that’s expected, if so….. it’s kinda clunky ˉ_(ツ)_/ˉ

Okay, now I realize that I’ve misunderstood both ramf and davidhc, so I’ll attempt clarification of my comments.

Davidhc, you are correct that changing from one theme to another does indeed present different home page layouts (i.e., “generic homepage”), now labelled “Blog Home” within the Full Site Editor (i.e., the “Editor”). This is by design and is normal, and [presumably] done for marketing purposes to promote customer usage of new themes. (Note: website builders are WordPress’ customers; customers being the users of the product.)

And as noted by Jessica Lyschik, “migrat[ing]” (i.e., exporting then importing) templates is not directly possible from the Editor at this time, and she provides a work-around using a custom page (in lieu of using the Blog Home template).

Although patterns may be exported as JSON files, and then imported as a new pattern, preliminary testing indicates that any “template parts” within the pattern are not imported with the pattern; that is, [apparently] template parts are stripped off upon import. Hence, exporting the Blog Home template as a custom pattern is achievable, but upon importing into the target theme, the template parts (i.e., “Header,” “Footer” template parts) are stripped off.

As such, remedial re-building of “the look and feel” of template parts is necessary. (However, building “look and feel” and “boilerplate content” into export/import patterns supports transferring customization across block themes, and may mitigate this effort somewhat.)

The upshot is that Jessica Lyschik’s suggestion may be your best alternative at this time.