Proposal: Guided Data Liberation

[akirk]

I'd like to propose a hybrid automatic/manual approach for a Data Liberation project:

We'd create a WordPress plugin that can be either installed on your new site, or run through WordPress playground that guides you through (test-)migrating your site like this:

1. It asks for your previous site address and identifies the CMS being used there.
2. It then looks up whether we have a migration guide available,
3. Guides the user through the process, helping them along the way by, for example, installing the right migration plugin.

Hybrid Approach

This approach is somewhat of a hybrid of a manual and automated approach. By sourcing the migration guides directly, updates to the migration process can be done through a Github PR to modify the guide.

It would display the guide step by step, making it less overwhelming.

Along the way, it can help to either automate certain steps or customize the guide:

• Install a plugin, identified by a link to the WordPress.org plugin directory.
• Modify links in the guide with the provided URL.
• Supply other information extracted from the source URL like site title.

Further down the line, in combination with the Tour plugin that we've introduced on the Make P2s, it could then continue to guide the user how to configure the site, after the import has happened.

Prototype

@ashfame has already started a prototype of which I'd like to share some screenshots here:

You first enter the URL here:

Then the right guide is displayed, with some steps, such as installing the right importer plugin, already completed:

You can see that this is a transformed version of the WordPress to WordPress guide.

Playground

When running the plugin in a playground, you'd end up with your site inside the playground where you can explore how well the migration worked, and eventually transfer it to a dedicated host.

[akirk]

I just wanted to add that there is still room for evaluating the use of AI/LLMs. I think we might be able to benefit a lot from AI consuming the migration guides we write and making them more actionable to the specific site to be imported.

Since AI is really good at working with text, we could let it consumes migration guides we create manually and it then might be able to deduce further actions, specific to the site to be migrated.

This is what I tried to suggest with the mention of the tour plugin: it might be interesting to guide the user beyond the actual data migration so that the site gets to a “launchable state.”