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Moving from WordPress
A club running on WordPress usually has more history than it realises: a decade of news, a members plugin, event sign-ups, and payment records going back years. Of all the ways into RunClub HQ this is the one that brings the most with it, and it is the one that needs us most — it reads your old site's database directly, so we do this with you.
Who can do this?
Running the import is ours. Checking what arrived is for your club's Club Admin or Membership Manager. Sending the welcome emails afterwards is also yours, from the members list, and never happens automatically.
What comes across
| Comes across | The detail |
|---|---|
| Members | Profile, contact details, addresses, emergency contacts and medical information, England Athletics registration number, and the reference for any GoCardless Direct Debit they had |
| Households | A junior imported under a parent arrives in a household with that parent as its manager |
| Sign-ins | An account is created for every member the old site held an email address for. Nobody is emailed until you say so |
| Events | Title, date, time, place and description, with check-in and attendance against the members who were there |
| Club records | The record board, mapped onto RunClub HQ's competition formats and age categories |
| Payments | Memberships, invoices, payment history and England Athletics affiliations, season by season |
| Messages | Past club emails, imported already archived so nobody's inbox fills up with five years of history on their first sign-in |
| News, pages and documents | Every post and page, with their categories, parent pages and images, and your document library with its files |
Pictures are downloaded from the old site and stored in your club's own file storage, so your news still has its photographs after the old site has gone.
Members keep the standing they had: somebody WordPress held as lapsed or resigned arrives lapsed or resigned, not as a fresh member. Where the old site's status is one we cannot read, the member arrives as Active and is worth a look.
What does not come across
- Consents. What each member agreed to on the old site was agreed on wording you no longer publish. They are collected again at first sign-in, on your club's current wording, which is what makes the record worth having. See Consents.
- Passwords. Nobody's. Members sign in with a link or a 6-digit code by email.
- Your theme and your plugins. Your writing comes across; the design does not. Your club's site on RunClub HQ is built from its own pages and sections — see Your club website.
- Forms, and anything a plugin held privately. If it is not in the members, events, records, payments, messages, documents, posts or pages above, assume it stays behind and ask.
What to get ready
- A copy of the WordPress database, and access to the folder its uploads live in so the images can be fetched. Whoever hosts the old site can produce both.
- A note of which plugin held what. Members, events and payments each came from somewhere, and knowing which saves a round of guessing.
- A list of the addresses on your old site that matter — the ones in your newsletter, on Facebook, and near the top of a search for your club. They become redirects, so those links keep working.
- A decision about when to tell your members. The import itself is silent. The moment they hear about it is the moment you send the welcome emails, and that is yours to pick.
Your England Athletics roster is still worth importing
The two fit together: WordPress brings the history your club wrote down, and England Athletics says who is competitively registered with you right now. See Getting your members in.
What happens after the import
We check the numbers with you, then there are three things worth doing before anyone is invited in.
- Re-check England Athletics. The old site's registration data may be a season out of date. We re-verify every member's registration number against England Athletics and create this season's affiliation records from what comes back.
- Re-check the Direct Debits. A mandate the old site recorded may have been cancelled since. We check each one against GoCardless, so nothing is ever collected against a mandate that no longer exists.
- Put the redirects in, on the day the old site is switched off — see Your club website → Keeping your old site's links working.
What your members see
Nothing at all until you send the welcome email, and you send it in batches you choose — see Bulk-welcome imported members.
The email tells them their membership has moved, that their details, payment history and records came with it, and gives them a link to sign in. There is no password to set. The first time they follow it they land on a short welcome page that collects the club's agreements, and then they are in the member app, with everything the import brought across already there.
Confirming the bulk action emails everybody in your selection
There is no draft step and no schedule. Send yourself a batch of one first, and send your biggest batch when somebody is around to answer questions for a day or two afterwards.
See also
- Moving your club to RunClub HQ — all the arrival paths in one table
- Your club website — rebuilding the site the pages arrive into
- Bulk-welcome imported members — recipe
- Give an imported member a sign-in — recipe