The Vanilla Knowledge feature is the perfect complement to your Vanilla community because you can use it to host content right in your community. You can create your own knowledge bases and then populate them with staff-written articles, converted community posts, and migrated external content.
📝 NOTE: This article provides information on migrating content into an existing knowledge base (KB). If you want to create a KB, see Vanilla Knowledge User Guide.
Types of migrations
The Vanilla SuccessTeam offers knowledge base migrations for any Vanilla customer who wants to import existing KB content into Vanilla. There are three types of KB migrations:
- Vanilla Forum Category to KB:Â If you're an existing customer who has been leveraging our Community platform to share knowledge, you probably have instructional posts under a dedicated category; you can convert these posts into articles in a knowledge base.
- External KB to Vanilla KB:Â If you have an existing KB hosted on another platform, you can migrate that KB into a knowledge base in Vanilla.
- New customer migration from external forum and KB:Â If you are new to Vanilla and have an existing KB hosted on another platform, you can migrate that KB into a knowledge base in Vanilla.
Regardless of your use case, our professional services and Knowledge teams can build a porter package for you so that you can get started with your own Vanilla Knowledge KB.
Migration process
We want to be sure that your migration of content into a Vanilla KB is successful, so we've established an effective migration process.
Considerations
Each platform is unique, so as we enter the migration-estimate phase, there are a few things to keep in mind. Review the features below and provide any information where applicable.
Comments
The Vanilla KB is currently not configured to house comments. Article comments and feedback are not migrated with the article.
Helpful votes
We can migrate the data related to an article's reputation (i.e., it’s “helpful” rating); however, ratings might be measured differently on different platforms (e.g., "Yes or No" versus "Like"). Provide any information related to your article-rating system.
Localization
If your current knowledge base supports multiple languages and you plan to migrate translations for your articles, specify the number of languages that you plan to support in your Vanilla KB.
Roles and permissions
We can migrate user-role information but we cannot migrate permissions. Each platform manages permissions differently so there may not be a 1:1 match within Vanilla's Permissions framework. After we’ve imported the user roles, you can configure your permissions.
iFrames and embedded content
Does your existing KB include embedded content, such as YouTube videos related to the subject matter? Vanilla’s editor automatically embeds images and GIFs, as well as URLs from common sources (YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Pinterest). Provide all available information about specific or custom types of embedded content that you want migrated.
Migration estimate checklist
In addition to the above information, each migration estimate requires that some basic information and assets be shared with the Vanilla team.
Database info
The most important part of the migration is the data. We’ll need a full database export to complete the estimate.
📝 NOTE: In some cases, we may use the API for a migration; if this applies to your migration, provide your API docs and access token in addition to the following.
 Provide:
- A link to your current knowledge base
- Software name and version
- Monthly pageviews (globally)
- Number of articles
- Are there attachments to be migrated?
- If yes: number of files AND total size
- A complete knowledge base database export, including:
- All Knowledges Bases
- All Categories
- All Articles
- All User and User Data
- All data linked to Helpful Votes
Redirects
Vanilla’s porter packages can also be configured to work with our Redirector plugin. If you would like us to implement redirects from your old content to the new, provide example URLs for the following (including any variations):
- Knowledge Bases
- Categories
- Articles
- Profiles
- Any other pages you wish to redirect
Other data
There may be other data you wish to import into Vanilla. If there is anything you are curious about, your account executive or CSM will work with you.
