Import & Export Content

What it helps you do

Move a whole list in or out of a site at once: a staff directory from a spreadsheet, a corrected set of phone numbers, or everything copied to another Dirigible site. You don't need an import plugin.

It's in the theme and appears under each Dirigible plugin that supports it, in that plugin's menu (People → Import & Export, and so on): People, Locations, Events, Portfolio, Artworks (artists and artworks), Documentation, Manifest (Documents, Snippets and Answers), Cards, Products, Packages, Salespeople, Publications (articles) and Fleet (aircraft). Music uses it too (releases and songs in one file). Shows and Better Breeder have their own versions.

How it works

• Export as a spreadsheet (CSV) to edit in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, or as JSON to copy everything to another Dirigible site. Download a blank spreadsheet gives you the right column headers to start from.
• Import a CSV or JSON file. Nothing changes until you've seen the preview: every row is marked New, Update (with what changes), Skip or Error, and you can untick any of them.
• Existing items are found by web address, then by what the plugin chooses (People: email, then name; Locations: name and street address; Events: title and start), so re-importing an edited export updates what's there instead of adding copies.
• In a spreadsheet, an empty cell never clears anything, and a value that can't be used (a date that doesn't exist, an email without an @) is flagged in the preview and leaves that field as it is.
• Some plugins carry two kinds of item in one file: Music's releases and their songs, Artworks' artists and artworks. The file brings both in, the linked kind first, so a release's track list or an artwork's artist finds what the same file adds. A spreadsheet holds one kind: the import reads it as whichever its columns fit.
• Items can sit under a parent (a Portfolio work under another work): a Parent column takes the parent's name or web address.
• A tree of pages (Manifest Documents) travels with each page's Path, its place in the tree like getting-started/overview, and a Parent given the same way. Two pages with the same web address under different parents each find their own, and a parent that's new in the same file is found too.
• Featured images in the file are downloaded into the Media Library, and categories the site doesn't have are added. The preview tells you first. Other image and file columns (an artwork's gallery, a doc's PDF, a package's card image) only pick files that are already in this site's Media Library, by their web address (any size of an image counts); a file from anywhere else is left as it is, and the preview says so.
• Content and excerpts travel exactly as written, line endings included, so a re-imported export shows no changes.
• A large import runs in small steps. If the page is closed part way, open it again and resume: nothing is added twice.
• Undo this import puts everything back for 7 days afterwards: what it added is deleted, and what it updated goes back exactly as it was. Anything edited since is left alone.

You need an Editor or Administrator account. Importing also needs permission to upload files.

Every column, for each plugin, is in that plugin's Import & Export page: for example People, Locations and Events.