Change blueprint

[Thorsten Hoppart]

Hi, is it possible to change the blueprint of a site which is already created?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

A blueprint helps you build a page or space initially, but it's not structural.

It's like a recipe - you can use it over and over to make cakes.  But if you add more chocolate to the blueprint, it has no way of going back to add chocolate to all the cakes you made before.

[Thorsten Hoppart]

Thank you, unfortunately not the answer I'd like to hear but if so I've got to search for another solution....

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What elements of a page are you trying to change globally?

[Thorsten Hoppart]

We used a theme for our knowledge base with some additional functions implemented by macros. Now we had an upgrade of our basic user licence to 250 and the additional users for the theme are to expensive. So we try to build in the needed functions in a blueprint like an additional search which is limited, rate macro...
If I deactivate the theme and apply a standard theme I need a way to bring all this additional functions to the existing pages and it would be very simple if it would be possible to realize it by changing the blueprint of a site.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, I'm afraid there's not a lot to do there, the macros have been used as content, rather than in the structural stuff, and the nature of content is that it can't be mass-updated easily

There's three basic approaches I would think of.  A bit of analysis on each macro (including a search, as it does let you at least say macro:x) you need to drop will tell you which approach is better for it, and then:

Option 1 - the easy, but very ugly one - leave it.  Ask your users to edit and update pages whenever they encounter it.  Probably most suitable for complex macros that have not been used a lot.

Option 2 - the hard ugly one - get the list of places its used and write a script that can pull each page and delete or replace the macro

Option 3 - the sneaky one - turn off the add-on that provides the macro and then write a user macro with the same name and parameters.  At a minimum you can make it put something on pages with "please replace me", which is better than "broken macro: x", but you may be able to replicate some of the functionality, or even call other macros that can do something similar (the user macro acting as a translating wrapper)