Help & Getting Started
Using DSW on an existing website
Already have a website? Treat DSW as a new setup, not an automatic conversion. Follow these steps to protect the website you have while preparing the new one.
Start on a separate test website, not on your live site. Installing a plugin, applying a website design and creating website pages are different actions. Some DSW setup actions change what visitors see immediately.
1. Keep a full backup before you begin
Ask your hosting provider how to back up both the website files and its database, and how to restore them. Keep a copy of your current theme and any custom changes. A page export alone is not a full backup.
Make a simple list of the pages you want to keep, their website addresses, your menu links, contact forms and any booking or payment features. Keep copies of important text and photographs that you have permission to use.
2. Ask your host for a separate test installation
A test installation is a separate WordPress website where you can try changes without altering your public website. Your host may call it a staging site. Ask the host to protect it with a password, especially if it is a copy containing customer information.
Discouraging search engines does not make a website private. DSW does not currently provide a genuinely private pre-publication preview. Creating DSW pages on an accessible installation publishes them there.
If you copy your existing site, make sure the test copy cannot send real customer emails, take payments, run live booking actions or renew subscriptions. Your host or existing website supplier should help isolate these functions.
3. Install Core, then review the included design
Follow the first-time installation guide on the test installation. Upload the DSW Core ZIP intact and activate it. Open DSW → Getting Started.
Core does not convert your old pages into DSW pages. Applying the included DSW website design is a separate setup action, at no extra charge. It changes the active WordPress theme, so the website’s layout and appearance change. Your previous theme remains installed, but its page-builder layouts, shortcodes, widgets and special features may not work with the DSW design.
4. Enter your school information and review website setup
Work through Getting Started with your school details, lessons, prices, teaching areas and contact information. DSW uses those answers for its managed website sections; it does not extract them from your existing pages.
Before approving website setup, read its proposed changes. Setup creates new published DSW-managed pages and a DSW navigation menu, and sets the DSW Home page as the website homepage. The DSW theme uses that managed menu.
DSW creates its own pages rather than taking over unrelated existing pages. Existing pages are not automatically copied into the new layout or added to the DSW menu. Similar page names can result in different website addresses, so check the addresses rather than assuming they stay the same.
5. Bring across only the content you need
For school details, lesson prices, FAQs, testimonials and pupil passes, use the relevant DSW forms. For a separate page such as “Your first lesson”, create or review a normal WordPress page, then add it to the menu through DSW.
Use these detailed guides: Your own pages, menu links and extra content. They show how to add a page, add a menu link and place extra content on a DSW-managed page.
If an existing page was built with another page builder, copying its text may be simpler than trying to reuse its layout. Do not delete old content until you have checked the replacement and kept a backup.
6. Check the new website before replacing the live one
Check the homepage, every menu link and submenu, lesson prices, contact buttons and forms on desktop and phone. Check any existing booking, payment or other third-party plugin separately—DSW does not promise compatibility with every plugin.
Compare important old page addresses with the new ones. Keep useful addresses where possible; if an address changes, arrange an appropriate redirect so visitors and search engines can reach its replacement. DSW does not automatically migrate all old addresses or their SEO settings.
Ask your host to explain how to move the tested website to the live address and keep a fresh restore point. Do not replace the live website until you have checked the content, privacy information, forms and essential features.
If you want to go back
Switching back to the old theme alone is not a complete undo: website setup also changes the homepage and creates pages and menu items. For a full return to the previous website, use the verified backup and your host’s restore procedure. On the test installation, you can start again without putting your live website at risk.