Community Newspaper - excellent transfer from Old to New - more than 10,000 posts

My website is www.beagleweekly.com.au ; an Australian free, on-line, community focused newspaper servicing an area of 3000 sq kms and a population of 40,000.

I would like to offer my recent experience of updating from Old to New. The Old Blog had 10,000 posts attributed with tags (not categories) that enabled separation of posts to be displayed on pages for Sports, Opinion, News, Community, Music, Arts, Food.. etc Tags worked very well HOWEVER the New Blog works with Categories. I had some reservations about the Old2New update and wrote to Wix Help with my concerns and they were terrific in the timely and generous assistance and reassurance they gave me. To be honest I knew that the update would bring me to a Blog Manager that was still being developed and I knew that the Old Blog layout option (Bricks) I used were not available, as yet, for the new Custom Feed however knowing the website feed would be so much faster I decided that if i could be flexible I could restore the newspaper to operational with a very fast turnaround. I batch edited my old posts before Old2New mirroring existing Tag values to the Category. Once done the Old data was ready and it updated seamlessly. Once confirmed it was then a simple task to verify the data came across with all of its Categorys, links, text and images. All GOOD. In all it took me only a few hours to add new Custom Feeds driven by the NewBlog to replace the Custom Feed from the Old. I do not consider myself an advanced user of Wix so I needed to be sure that using just the onboard tools available (no custom html) I was going to be able to build the update while the website was still LIVE. I admit that there are things I have conveyed to the New Blog developers that I would like to see reinstated that had been available in the OldBlog manager and in the display options. My emails have been acknowledged and responded to with positives that they appreciate my input and are endeavoring to return the features to the NewBlog. Was it too early to transfer over? For me the answer is No as the benefits of a faster, sleek NewBlog has seen a marked improvement in website performance that equals reader pleasure and an improved experience for them. In time as the proposed changes in the Wishlist are rolled out I will adapt my website to suit. To make the transition there are times when you will need to do a work-around. So long as you are prepared to accept that the OldBlog is different to the NewBlog and currently presents differently with fewer design variables available I strongly recommend the update If however you have doubts, reservations and questions write to the Wix team. They have been there everytime I have sent in a question. Thank you in particular to S and J who were TERRIFIC. Feel free to ask me any questions and if i can i will answer them. Mine is no doubt just one of thousands of update stories. I my case it was a seamless update and I look forward to the many proposed improvements to be rolled out for NewBlog. Lei