New site builds
A
Alex Fleck
I've come across this a few times with Subbly clients. I build new sites for them. Largely I use my own template (Good Skin Care theme) and then rebuild it with a new style/theme/color palette. One current client has a great library of content and articles that need to stay. So the way the system currently is, I have to make a choice for their project... Do we build a new site away from their current site and sacrifice all their database of content (media and articles) or build a new site live using unpublished pages on their existing setup. In this scenario, I cannot make the ultimate changes I want to for the design (e.g. new fonts, header/menu), nor the blocks I designed for my existing theme... i have to rebuild them.
This isn't ideal. It would be great, for longevity (e.g. client sticking with Subbly's builder) if we/they could revamp site designs and overlay them onto existing media libraries they've spent months or years curating. Then we can design new sites that are completely customized in preview mode for the client and simply overlay them, once approved, to push live. Hope that makes sense. Maybe the new website builder that's in the works speaks to this issue. It's really only an issue for us designers and long-term users of Subbly who wish to revamp and improve, without having to use a sub-standard pre-built theme/site design that they are not happy with and strip it apart.
Carmela Payne
This has just made me also think... I'm producing digital content as an add on for subscribers which has been very successful in maintaining interest and reducing churn. I'm doing this by creating new, password protected pages with external links to pdfs via google drive, but they still have to enter another password to get into each one of these pages, it's not automatically only available to 'Active' Subs.
If I can't maintain the continuous content without losing them if I change themes, I too will have to look at getting another website to link customers to.
Would this be similar Alex to what you're describing above?
Thanks for bringing up a great point. :)
A
Alex Fleck
Carmela Payne: Hey Carmela. I think the issue is certainly similar in that the risk here is a loss of access to one's content & media (or the knowledge we must sacrifice it if we want a new aesthetic) . If you take, say Wordpress, what happens is you build your database of content over years e.g. blog posts, media library... and if you need to change the aesthetic of the site, you simply overlay the new design on top of that database - yes, you may need to reformat some pieces, but the content is safe in the database. My worry here in Subbly is that users wanting to completely revamp their site have to compromise on their database of content, or spend many hours porting it across manually. There are also potential SEO concerns with that, especially for longer-established sites.