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Dolphin website "migration" to Una, it's possible!

Migration between quotation marks because you have to nuance a little ...
Well I will share my experience because I know that other people are in the case and ask a lot of questions and then I think that Una team will be happy to know how it evolves at home.
So my situation is an existing Dolphin dating site since 2011 with around 20,000 real members, all with an answering e-mail address, which I check regularly. On the other hand, and this is very important, this site has excellent SEO, crucial point, because in the area of the meeting there are giants who have big means and thousands of smaller sites, in other words , the competition is fierce and it is a huge job to lead his site to the top of the rankings.
With a Dolphin very functional, but aging and especially poorly adapted to cope with the exponential use of mobiles, I was interested in UNA from the beginning, I followed its impressive evolution patiently waiting until it is mature enough and stable only to consider a new solution.
I thought all the time about the right way to do it, I discussed it a lot, among other things with Andrew that I thank for his advice and I quickly understood a first thing.
Let's say that the first question to be decided, is it necessary to create a new site? - or "update" the existing site?
A frank update is impossible, but however, I could very well use the tool "Dolphin Migration", create a UNA site on a temporary address, transfer all the data since dolphin, and reinstate the whole on the site intial. Seen by the members, the operation would have been perceived as a simple update. It's an "easy" solution, you lose nothing, neither the members nor the content, and it's "little" work. Tempting!
Yes, but ! How would Google react by reporting to a site that offers the same content overnight with totally different links and dead links? Frankly, I like that I do not know, and I gave up this bad idea, just an illusion of solution in my opinion.
The second solution and in my opinion the only real solution is to create a new site, new domain name.
After, we can very well transfer all data Dolphin, BUT, if you do, you may be penalized by Google because you will have the same content on two different sites, again I did not take the risk .
So, the solution is to make a brand new site, start from scratch or almost. Not totally because you already have the tank of limbs in dolphin. Again, you can use "Dophin Migration" to transfer members in one operation, use "Dolphin Connect" and invite Dolphin members to migrate their profile to your new site. Finally, I chose this solution which has the merit of sorting and recovering only the most active members.

So, around September 15, I created my new site, the goal being to install it, to configuer, knowing that a suite of Rc was planned to make the system more stable, it was time to get started.
Once installed I prepared the site at best, writing blogs and faqs and forums to place a maximum of keywords and also so that members do not arrive on an empty site. During this time on my site dolphin I prepared the opinion, announcing the imminent exit of a new site by giving a little taste in images and videos so as to provoke enthusiasm while explaining that the site Dolphin would remain functional for a long time.
In the meantime successive updates (thank you for that) Una more stable and I opened the door with a poster on my site dolphin giving the link of the new site with a small article still encouraging people to migrate their profile "Dolphin Connect" Ah! Important! I changed "Dolphin Connect" so that it transfers all the fields of the Dolphin profile, so that the member finds his identical pofil without doing anything.
Here is the progress of the transfers.

image_transcoder.php?o=bx_froala_image&h=730&dpx=1&t=1545259916

If I monitor the activity such as photos, conversations and forums, it's the same curve, so it starts slowly but surely.
The SEO side was my biggest concern and until three weeks ago, the result was zero, discouraging, catastrophic! Google seemed to sulk my new site!
But during the last weeks, it is finally visible and progresses quickly. on some basic search it is even close to my Dolphin site. By the way, he's a good indicator, I'm starting to have fake profiles coming in from outside.
Search for "100% Free Dating Site"
Again, in principle, since this is the title of the site and that it is unique, rather quickly, say in the month, a search on, should have shown Meetsee in the first results. In early December, it always gave absolutely nothing, zero, and this on the first 20 pages, catastrophic and discouraging.
Moreover how to work the progression, when one appears nowhere? Total helplessness.
On December 15, finally, this research showed Meetsee in last position on the third page.
This December 19th, this research now shows Meetsee on the first page !!!
Page 1 - Position 1 => Twoforlife "Dophin"
Page 1 - Position 8 => Meetsee "Una"

Search on "Free dating site Belgium"
This December 19th ...
Page 1 - Position 1 => Twoforlife "Dophin"
Page 3 - Position 1 => Meetsee "Una"

Search on "Dating site Belgium"
This December 19th ...
Page 1 - Position 3 => Twoforlife "Dophin"
Page 4 - Position 5 => Meetsee "Una"

Of course it is important to advance these results so that my Una site can stand on its own and can get new members from outside and not only from my dolphin site.
Conclusions - Well, I do not know if we can really talk about a , but say that replacing a dolphin site with a Una site is possible, I can say it now, so far I had doubts, but they are dissipated.
Much remains to be done, both on SEO and on the site itself, but yes, it is possible to do that. I just wanted to share with you the beginning of this new experience, I will come back later to give some news on this subject.

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Comments (14)
    • Hi Baloo - thanks for sharing this journey with us - it is a fascinating insight, and congratulations on your success.  My opinion on SEO is that is your site is legitimate, your intentions are clear, you know what you want your site to be, and who the audience is, and you work consistently to support this direction over a period of time, the Search Rankings will come, always, every time.  Your example of couragous and diligent application to your purpose is an inspiration to all of us, well done and merci!
      We look forward to  Meetsee "Una" finding Page 1, Position 1 very soon!

    • Thank you for sharing! it is indeed possible, but as you said has to be done with planning and consideration. Once you've done, it's only going to go up. :)

      • We have similar good SEO results with Educated Singles. Quite impressive

        • Well done. While many may dismiss this as a "long tail" phrase, the fact that you got to #1 positions shows that the underlying structure of the SEO-relevant features is configured correctly. So, you can focus on brand development, community building and marketing. Good luck! 😀 

        • I made my site in 2011 also. It was sort of like a new experience with no idea or intentions of actually making it into anything. An experiment per se. Over couple months I watch member join. First 200 and it grew to over 30,000. I was a bad webmaster who didnt pay enough attention and watched it slowly die down. Dolphin to me had so many modules to choose from and before I migrated it to UNA it was what I wanted it to be. I like UNA very much and hope that alot of the module developers from Dolphin also migrate to UNA as I really think a big Market like Dolphin needs to be here. This is the only regret that I have leaving Dolphin. I am still teaching myself Studio but some stuff I have a hard time finding. I hope  that I can at least figure it out. I too also had a great SEO on my old site, being top of the page and even having seperate pages included in the search. One of the most powerful modules that I wish I had was the Facebook timeline one that someone made. It was seamless and powerful. My question is would I need to ask the developer permission to recode it in UNA or because it would be recoded in UNA make it a different Module. I know there was mention of making 3rd party modules into UNA but what would be the morally correct and or legal way to do that? Not to make money but because I believe the timeline UNA has is missing alot of features. I dont even see a button that allows posters to delete their own posts. I would love to see video tutorials on how to make an UNA website from scratch with explaining and using Studio. If there is can anyone give me a link? I still cant find a way to delete the quote on my home cover page. 

          • Hi Will Roberts - in response to a few of the points you have raised here:
            1. The UNA Market is Growing! Over the last 6 months the size of the UNA Market has doubled - UNA have launched dozens of new modules and various 3rd Party providers have done the same. AQB Soft are consistently working on updating all the Dolphin Modules into UNA, and as I understand it Modzzz are preparing to do the same. Between these two 3rd Party providers we have most of the Dolphin Modules covered. The advantage  in UNA is that all the 3rd Party Modules are curated and checked by our Dev Team - so you know that they will work. It was an issue with Dolphin of 3rd Apps not working properly and sites 'breaking' because of poor coding - with UNA we ensure that every app released through our UNA Market works.
            2. It is absolutely legal and encouraged that 3rd Party Developers release modules for UNA. UNA is Open Source software, licensed under MIT - so essentially anyone can do anything with it that they please. If you wish to sell apps through UNA Market - there needs to be a point of difference - ie, you can't just copy someone else's app and re-release it under your name, but we absolutely encourage developers to create modules and services for the marketplace - we will support them every step of the way to get there:  there is most of the necessary information for developing apps for UNA here: https://github.com/unaio/una/wiki#development
            3.Have you seen the Timeline Module for UNA? it exists already, you can view it here: https://una.io/page/view-product?id=32
            4. We are currently working on the UNA Academy - you can see the UNA Start Guide here: https://una.io/index.php - also we have lots of great content in the UNA Beginners Group Here: https://una.io/page/groups-home

            Any questions, please ask!

            • Hello Mark, about the marcket, yes, it is filled, but the drip, we would like a big boost. Remember, I made the same remark as Will Roberts a few months ago, and as he says, compared to the choice dolphin offered, there is still a lot of work to be done. For Modzzz, are you absolutely sure? Because it's been so long that we talk about it, that frankly I start to doubt ...
              Also I have a question about the modules. So, if I'm fine, I take any AQB module, I edit two lines and I put on sale twice cheaper. Maybe license MIT allows this, but morally, I would be ashamed to do it. Would you do that? I would be very surprised if you did it ... So I understand the question on this subject, and I would like a more precise answer. Yes is exactly the limit?

              Also thank you for your encouragement :-)

              • Modzzz announced the transition to UNA, but apparently, they're still learning the new structure. 

                As for copying an app from AQB or anyone... You can do whatever the app developer license is allowing. We release all our apps under MIT - so you can build upon any of our apps and resell, but we still reserve the right to delist a product from the UNA Market if it doesn't add value, or is in effect a slight tweak of an existing app. As for AQB - they are listing their products under different license terms, which imply different rules. Remember, MIT license is not viral - you can take our Posts module for example, rebuild it and release your product under a proprietary license if you want.  

                In other words - we are largely giving away most of our modules, yet we do not require everyone esle to do the same. 

              • Nice post!

                • The fishes explain everything :)

                  • Baloo,

                     I was wondering did you actually have to change the whole URL to avoid broken links and duplicate information or could you have changed it from com to let us say biz, would that work for the SEO? I have multiple of the same URL with different endings such as net, org, and so on. At this time I do have them forwarded to the same site and would that affect the SEO and duplicate information if I switched one of them over to UNA?

                    Chris

                    • Hi, congrats on successful move, can you share where I can get the migration tool or script? Thanks

                      • If only I had read this earlier. I destroyed all the organic traffic. Now I have 2.5 thousand indexed pages and 45 thousand unindexed mostly with error 404 in google search console. It makes me cry because I'm raking the bottom of the analytics with my visit.image_transcoder.php?o=sys_images_editor&h=1647&dpx=1&t=1698762517

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