Move Your Website to Duda for Agency Plan and Higher

Moving websites from another platform to Duda allows your agency to focus on a single platform and lower the overall cost of ownership by saving on maintenance costs and staff hours. In addition you can enjoy Duda’ performance benefits including: SEO, Core Web Vitals, responsive pages, pagespeed, and schema.

Moving websites to Duda is completed by manually rebuilding websites using the Duda editor. Depending on the complexity of the original websites, this can take between 3-5 hours per site. This is the easiest option for those with 20 or less sites that need to be moved. To speed up the build process, this guide explains how to use connected templates, Connected Data, Dynamic Pages, and the Content Library.

The features mentioned in this guide are available to users on an Agency plan and higher. If you are on a trial, Basic, or Team plan, see Move Your Website to Duda for Basic and Team Plans. If you want to upgrade, schedule time with our team.

Duda Resources

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:

• Responsive Website Builder
• Custom Branding
• Widgets and Layout
• Dynamic Pages and Collections
• Going Live

If at any point you need help, you can ask our Community members for advice or contact support.

(Optional) White Label Duda

To help create a cohesive brand experience for your clients, we recommend you take advantage of Duda’s white label features including custom branding, and custom platform, site, and email domains. However, this is not required to move your website to Duda.

The following are support articles that explain how to set up white label features:

• Custom Branding
• Configure White Label Platform Domain
• Configure White Label Email Domain
• Configure White Label Site Domain

For a full list of white label features, see White Label.

Review Existing Site Design and Content

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.

Design

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.

Content

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.

Create Connected Template

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.

Create Template

To create a template:

1. Log in to your account to access the Dashboard.
2. Click Create New Site.
3. At the top of the page, click Create Template.
4. 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.
5. Once you know which template you want to use, hover over it and click Create & Customize.
6. Type a name in the Template name field, then click Create & Customize. The name you type here is what will appear in the Team Templates section.
7. Customize your template in the editor by adding pages and widgets.
8. 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.

Connect Template Widgets to Content Library

To connect data to site widgets:

1. Right-click the widget you want to connect to a data field.
2. From the context menu, click Connect to data.
3. In the Connect Data dialog, select the data field that you want to connect this widget to.
4. 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 Team Templates section of the Template selection page.

Create Site

Now that you have created a connected template, you are ready to begin building sites with it.

To create a site:

1. Log in to your account to access the Dashboard.
2. Click Create New Site.
3. In the side menu, click Team Templates.
4. Hover over the connected template you created previously and click Start Building.
5. Type a site name and click Start Building.

Import Content

In order for the widgets in your connected template to populate with content, you need to add content to the Content Library. To see a list of supported widgets and data types, see Connected Data.

There are several ways of adding data to the Content Library:

• Manually. In the left panel, click Content to go to the Content Library and add content: business information (addresses, phone numbers, social links, and so on), text, images, and more.
• 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).

The content that is being synced through Connected Data can be edited directly in the Connected Data pop up, in the Content Library, or in the external source to which it is connected. Remember to republish the site after you make the changes.

(Optional) 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.

To use Dynamic Pages you need to create a collection, create a dynamic page, connect the widgets on the page to the collection, then connect the collection to a List widget or Navigation Links widget so users can navigate to the individual pages.

For more information about Dynamic Pages and how to use them on multi-language sites, see Dynamic Pages.

Create Collection

Collections are similar to databases in that they contain lists of items that have the same type of information (name, location, image, and so on). There are several types of collections (internal, Google Sheets, Airtable, external database) and every site can have up to 100 collections.

To learn more about the different collection types and how to structure your collections, see Collections.

To create a collection:

1. In the side panel, click Content, then click Collections.
2. Click + New Collection, then select the type of collection you want to create.
   Note

   You must be on a Custom plan to connect to external databases.

3. Connect to the collection.
4. Define the correct data type for each field.
5. Click Done.

To view your new collection, in the side panel click Content, then click Collections. The next step is to create a new Dynamic Page and connect it to your newly created collection.

Create or Convert Dynamic Pages

You can either create a new Dynamic Page, or convert an existing page to a Dynamic Page.

To create a new Dynamic page:

1. In the side panel, click Pages, and then click + New Page.
2. Select Dynamic Page.
3. Type a Page Name.
4. Select the collection you want to connect to from the drop down.
5. Click Add Page.

To convert an existing page to a Dynamic page:

1. In the side panel, click Pages.
2. Click the Page Settings () icon next to the page you want to convert, then select Convert to Dynamic Page.
3. Select the collection from the drop down.
4. Click Done.

After creating or converting a Dynamic Page, the next step is to connect your widgets.

Connect Dynamic Page Widgets

After creating a Dynamic Page, the next step is to connect your widgets and each element on the page to fields in the collection. To see a list of supported widgets and data types, see Connected Data.

To connect widgets to a collection:

1. Right click the widget you want to connect, and select Connect to Data.
2. Select the field from your collection using the drop down (only relevant fields are shown).
3. Select Done.

The Connected Data () icon appears on the widget indicating that it is connected.

If you need to change which collection your widgets are connected to, or instructions on how to connect to a Custom widget, see Connect Your Dynamic Page Widgets.

Connect List or Navigation Link Widget to Dynamic Page

The final step in creating Dynamic Pages is to create a list of links to navigate to the different pages. This is done by adding a List widget or Navigation Links widget and connecting it to your Dynamic Page.

To connect a List or Navigation Links widget to your Dynamic Page:

1. In the side panel, click Widgets, then add the List or Navigation Links widget.
2. Right-click the widget to open the settings menu, and click Connect to Data.
3. Select the collection from the Connect List to menu.
4. Map the fields in the collection to the elements in the widget you want to display.
5. Under Connect Link to select the dynamic page. This is what creates the link between the widget and your Dynamic Pages.
6. Click Done.

For more information on how to filter and sort the collection to display only what you want, or how to use Dynamic Filters to filter widgets that are connected to collections in Dynamic Pages, see Add Lists to Display Dynamic Pages.

Get Client Feedback

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 add site comments:

1. Click the plus + icon on the comments bar. Comments can be added to any element on the site.
2. Click an element to add a comment. Hover on the element to help position the comment accurately.
3. Choose whether you want the comment to be internal or visible to clients and your team.
4. Enter your comment in the input field. You can also add an image as a comment by clicking the image icon in the bottom right corner of the comment field.
5. Click Submit.

To add clients to site comments:

1. If clients do not already have permissions to the site you will need to add them via Client Management. For more information, see Client Management.
2. After they have access to the site, click the Share icon on the right panel to open the Notification Settings.
3. Choose Add Client Permissions.
4. Select their name in the drop-down menu.

To learn more about how to reply to, edit, delete, or resolve site comments, see Site Comments.

Publish Your Site and Go Live

Taking your site live requires publishing your site, setting up your domain, and then setting up your domain through your domain host. To learn more about the process, see Go Live, Publish, and Set Up Your Domain.

Publish Site

For your site to show up at any domain, you first need to publish it.

To publish your site:

1. In your editor, on the top right, click Publish. If your site was previously published, click Republish.
2. If you have not already selected a Plan, a payment page appears. Select a plan, and continue.

Set Up Domain in Duda

After publishing the site, you are prompted to select from one of the following three domain options:

• Default Domain. This is a domain hosted by Duda, and is not good for your site’s SEO. The URL will be a subdomain of Duda’s with your custom naming. You may use the original default domain.
• Purchase a new domain for your site. Purchase a domain from Google Domains or Hover. When you type your domain into the field, a menu appears with suggestions. This domain will already be set up to work with Duda. For more detailed instructions, see Purchase a Custom Domain.
• Use a domain you already own. You may use a domain that you already own from the domain host you purchased it from. Ensure you add "www." to the URL.

Set Up Domain in Domain Host

To connect a domain you already own:

1. To connect your domain to your site, click Continue.
2. Duda searches for your domain host provider, and prompts you to log in with your provider (for example, GoDaddy). If Duda cannot find your host provider, see Domain Host Provider Not Found.
3. Type your login credentials for your domain host provider, and click Continue. Alternatively, if you do not own the login credentials, click Forward login to a colleague. Copy the link provided and send it to a colleague or your client to complete the setup.
4. You will receive a confirmation message that your domain is now configured. Click Done.

Conclusion

Now that you have successfully moved your site to Duda, make sure to cancel your subscription and close your old site. In addition to the features mentioned in this guide, Duda offers many other features to help you work most efficiently. Check out the following resources to learn how to get the most out of the Duda platform:

• Support Portal
• Duda University
• Duda Community
• Duda Experts