Export and import structures and data

Sitefinity CMS enables you to export and import your website content and data structure to facilitate Continuous Delivery, content migration, and other similar scenarios. The export/import capabilities fully support the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) open standard. This way, you can leverage the same standard to export content from another system and import it in your Sitefinity CMS website and vice versa. Additionally, Sitefinity CMS supports different kinds of export of structures and data, depending on the scenario that you want to accomplish. 

Purpose: Use this export to download structure and content and import them in another Sitefinity CMS instance and thus reuse part of a website or the entire website. This export supports both structure and content. Its purpose is to facilitate the reuse parts of a website. You must not use it to transfer data between the environments of a Continuous delivery scenario.

For more information, see Export a ZIP file.

Purpose: Use this export to transfer structural changes to the next environment. This export supports the Continuous delivery scenario and exports only structures. 

When you update a data structure on your local development machine, you can export the changes and then automatically import them on the next environment from the continuous delivery process. 

For example, if you update a dynamic module or add a custom field to a static module, you can export all changes. Sitefinity CMS saves them in a folder on the file system. After you transfer the folder to the next environment, upon initialization, Sitefinity CMS automatically applies all the changes.
For more information, see Export and deploy code changes.

After you transfer the folder to the next environment, upon initialization, Sitefinity CMS automatically applies all the changes, maintaining a version history. 
For more information, see Version tracking and import trigger.

Purpose: Use this export to create a NuGet package that contains an add-on. This export supports the creation of distributable add-ons and exports structure and content. 

The add-on consists of structure and content of different Sitefinity CMS modules. After you develop an add-on that you want to distribute, you must export it from your Sitefinity CMS. You export only the part that you want to distribute. For example, a module, some pages, and page templates. 

You can export your add-on as a NuGet package.
For more information, see Export the add-on.

After you create the add-on as a NuGet package, you can install the package in another project in the same way as you install a standard NuGet package.
For more information, see Install add-ons.

NOTE: By default, with this process you transfer only the structure. For more information about including the content, see Import and delete content from add-ons.