{"id":8823,"date":"2020-05-05T10:34:23","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T14:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/webguide\/?page_id=8823"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T18:31:00","slug":"how-to-copy-content","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/webguide\/userguide\/pages\/how-to-copy-content\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Copy Content When Migrating Between Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a website is significantly outdated, departments may request a new, blank site and selectively copy over content that should remain. This is a good opportunity to clean up and reorganize content \u2014 but it also introduces a common migration issue.<\/p>\n

When content is copied from an old site to a new one, images and documents may appear to copy over but actually continue to live on the old site. During copy-and-paste, these files are not<\/strong> added to the Media Library of the new site. Instead, they are displayed on the page while still being pulled from the old site.<\/p>\n

Because the old site remains active during development, this issue often goes unnoticed. The content appears to work correctly until the old site is taken offline.<\/p>\n

If images or document links continue to reference the old site, they will break as soon as the old site is taken offline \u2014 resulting in missing images and broken file links on the new website.<\/p>\n

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Why This Happens<\/h2>\n

When content is copied from one website to another:<\/p>\n