Hi Martin,
You helped me with a question I had and I wanted to get a little more information. Here is the post for reference: http://pub24.bravenet.com/forum/2055467258/show/488377
I looked on your website wizard page and wanted to know how I can switch from a Red Wizard (what I have now) to a Blue Wizard without losing any information already on my site and messing anything up!
Also, will I still have my Theme if I switch to a Blue Wizard? Right now I have one with blue falling leaves which I am kinda partial to.
By following the "Step by Step" link in the Wizard, it is possible to switch from the Red Wizard to the Blue Wizard, without losing the bulk of your content. You may lose some data, if the content areas don't exactly match up in the exchange, but I have never really checked the losses in detail. I have a test site that I switch back and forth all the time, but it only has junk data in it.
If you are partial to the theme you currently have, do not switch to the Blue Wizard. The Themed layouts from the Red Wizard can not be brought across to the Blue Wizard. The Blue Wizard has it's own layouts. The Blue Wizard has the advantage of no page limitation but the layouts are not very interesting. If you did switch to the Blue Wizard, and then added a few pages, and then switched back to the Red Wizard, anything over the 7 page limit would be gone.
If you want to see what the Blue Wizard has to offer, without affecting your site, register for another free site. You can have as many as you want. Run through the Blue Wizard and check out the offerings and capabilities. When your done testing, throw the whole thing away.
Both Wizards are very confining. It usually doesn't take very long for users to realize this and want more. But your not going to get it. If you want to get more out of your designs, you need to break away from the Wizards. Get yourself a good web page design package and create your own pages. There are lots of them available from free to a couple hundred dollars. Try Nvu.com (free), or CoffeeCup.com (low cost), or Dreamweaver.com (high cost). There are many more at either end of the scale. All of these packages come with built in upload capability. Develope and change your pages on your local PC, and then just upload them to your site.
Is this going to mean you will have to learn a little bit about HTML and CSS? Yes. Moving away from the Wizards means that you will be responsible for the navigation menu, inserting services, content areas, etc.. But it is not difficult to understand, and you would have to learn it eventually anyway.
Will you lose everything you have already created, if you move away from the Wizards? No. You can take it with you. It's a fairly simple task to download everything you have already created to your local hard drive and then open it up with a web design editor. Blue falling leaves and all. This also gives you the advantage of a local backup. In the event of something happening to your site, or if you decide to relocate, you can easily recover.
