Importing an existing EE site into MSM

Question

We recently purchased and installed MSM running EE 2.7.0

One of the sites we want to manage with MSM is already up and running on its own using with EE 2.6. Both sites are on the same server.

Is there a easy way to get the structure, templates, etc. out of the existing installation and into MSM?

Figure this is common occurrence, but the docs are a bit confusing in this regard.

EDIT: We were advised by EE support that at least in terms of the templates the best bet is to save them as as files and then relocate them, but it sounds like on a larger level there is no magic trick here.

Not sure on the MySQL side if anyone has any tricks to offer?

Answer 1

Yes, EE support is right. The template can be imported via template files. But there would be other data like channels and their entries, categories, images etc would be needed to be imported into MSM site.

1) For channel entries, categories you can have simple way. Just run SQL into existing website and export entries data into CSV. The entries can imported with third party add-ons like Datagrab or Importer modules.

2) For images, make the proper file upload directories and put the images. After that from File Manager do sync all. But note, you should take about directory id because in the channel entry the image path save like {filedir_x}.

3) There may be some third party addons data also. The simple way would be import with SQLs. For it, you will need to study how those addons store data.

There may some other concerns also but not sure without looking at your existing website and MSM site structure.

I hope, it would help you.