Migrating websites to Duda consolidates your operations onto a single platform, which may reduce maintenance costs and the time your staff spends managing multiple systems. Duda also supports enhanced website performance features such as improved SEO, Core Web Vitals compliance, responsive design, faster page speeds, and integrated schema markup.
The process of moving websites to Duda involves manually rebuilding each site using the Duda editor. The time required varies based on the site’s complexity, typically ranging from 3-5 hours per site. This approach is generally more manageable for agencies with up to 20 sites to migrate. This guide will detail how to expedite the build process using features like connected templates, Connected Data, Dynamic Pages, and the Content Library.
Please note that some of the features discussed in this article are available only on specific Duda plans. We recommend reviewing your current plan details to determine which features you can access and whether an upgrade might be necessary to utilize all the functionalities mentioned. To review our current plans, see Plans.
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If you are limited on time or resources, you can hire a Duda Expert to move your sites. To see a full list of experts, please visit experts.duda.co.
If you are new to Duda we recommend you take some time to become familiar with the editor and several key features mentioned in this guide. Following are a list of video resources on Duda University (please note that some of these features are available only on specific Duda plans):
If at any point you need help, you can contact support.
Before moving your sites to Duda, we recommend you thoroughly review your existing site’s design and content. This will help you determine which Duda templates and features to use in order to move your sites most efficiently. In addition, it can help you identify upsell opportunities for your clients.
Compare your current site designs to our extensive list of Duda templates. Ideally, you can find a template that most closely matches your existing design. If you can’t find a template that closely matches your existing design, or if your current site design is outdated, we recommend using this as an upsell opportunity by offering your clients a site redesign. In your redesign, you can leverage a Duda template to save yourself time.
Review your site content to determine which assets (images, text, videos, etc) need to be moved to the new site. If you are doing a redesign, you might not need to include all the original assets in the redesign. Of the assets that need to be moved, determine where they are stored and how they are organized. This is a great time to consolidate or reorganize how assets are stored, to help save yourself time as you rebuild your sites.
This phase is beneficial even for single-site migrations and becomes especially recommended if you have multiple sites to migrate. The steps outlined here could help streamline and speed up the transition process.
A template is turned into a connected template by connecting the widgets in the template to the Content Library. A benefit to using a connected template is each time you create a site with the template, all connected elements are automatically populated by data in that site’s Content Library. This saves you time, as opposed to manually entering content into each individual widget on your site. In addition, you only have to update content once in the Content Library and it will update across all relevant connected widgets. For example, if your business phone number changes you can update it in the Content Library once and all connected widgets that display the business phone number will be updated.
To create a connected template you need to create a template, then connect the elements in the template to the Content Library.
To create a template:
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Log in to your account to access your Dashboard.
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Click Create New Site.
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At the top of the page, click Create Template.
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Browse the list of templates to find one you can use as a starting point for your design. You can hover over a template and click Preview to view the template on desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes.
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Once you know which template you want to use, hover over it and click Create & Customize.
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Type a name in the Template name field, then click Create & Customize. The name you type here is what will appear in the Custom Templates section.
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Customize your template in the editor by adding pages and widgets.
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In the side panel, click Content, then click Business Info and enter placeholder data. Do the same for Business Text and Business Images. The purpose of adding placeholder data is to give the widgets data to connect to in the next step, Connect Template Widgets to Content Library.
Next, you need to connect the widgets in your template to the placeholder data you entered in the Content Library.
To connect data to site widgets:
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Right-click the widget you want to connect to a data field.
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From the context menu, click Connect to data.
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In the Connect Data dialog, select the data field that you want to connect this widget to.
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Any widget you successfully connect to the data in the Content Library is marked with a blue Connected Data (
) icon.
When you are finished customizing the template design and connecting widgets, click Done in the upper right corner.
The template will be saved in the Custom Templates section of the template selection page.
To create a site:
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Log in to your account to access your Dashboard.
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Click Create New Site.
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Select a template or if you created a custom template, in the side menu, click Custom Templates.
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You can hover over a template and click Preview to view the template on desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes.
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Hover over the desired template and click Start Building.
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Type a site name and click Start Building.
Content can now be imported from the old site.
Images, files, and business information can be imported into the Content Library of your new site (the is where files and business information for a site is stored and managed).
There are several ways of adding data to the Content Library:
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Manually. In the left panel, click Content (click Media Manager for images and files).
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For importing options for the Media Manager, see Import Content.
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API. Use the Content Library API to push content to the Content Library and connect it to the different site widgets. This is especially useful if you keep business data in an external source (for example, Salesforce, your own contact form, and so on).
If you completed Phase 2, the content set in the business areas should automatically update. If you skipped Phase 2, this content will not appear on the site.
Dynamic Pages
Dynamic Pages work by using the same design to dynamically generate multiple pages using data from a connected collection. The result is a unique page of content for each row in the data set. This dramatically speeds up the process of creating and updating multiple pages at once. The ideal use case for Dynamic Pages is building a website that contains multiple pages with the same structure, but different content. For example, real estate listings, catalog items, landing pages, and more.
For additional information on Dynamic pages, please visit the following resources:
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Dynamic Pages and Collections (a Duda University course)
Blog
If the old site has a blog, it may be able to be imported if it has an RSS feed. For more information, see Import Blog Posts from RSS Feeds.
Define the site's color palette, design the buttons, set the text to be used throughout the site, and more in the Theme panel. This allows you to quickly and efficiently make sweeping visual changes, reducing design time and keeping your site's style consistent across pages.
To open the Site Theme panel, in the side panel, click Theme.
For more information, see Site Theme.
Now that your content is in the Content Library, you are ready to build the site. We recommend adding text first so you can ensure it fits within your design. If it doesn’t, make the necessary adjustments to the design. After all the text is added, start adding in images, videos, and any other content type.
If you are requesting feedback the Site Comments feature may be just the best tool for the job. The site comments feature allows you to correspond with your client directly in the editor. The benefit to using site comments is the entire review process is faster, clearer, and more accurate, which gives your clients better service, faster go-live, and allows more time to scale your business. It also eliminates the need for alternative methods of communication (such as email, messages, phone calls, etc) and creates a single channel for receiving feedback and responding to it.
To learn more about how to reply to, edit, delete, or resolve site comments, see Site Comments.
To learn about giving clients access, see Client Management.
Congratulations, you're ready to go live with the site!
Taking your site live requires publishing your site, setting up your domain, and then setting up your domain through your domain host.
To publish the site click Publish in the navigation bar and follow the prompts.
To learn more see:
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Site Management: Subscription and Deletion for information on site subscriptions.