Move a WordPress Site to Siren Cloud

The Siren Cloud Connector moves a WordPress store that runs the Siren plugin to Siren Cloud. It copies your programs, collaborators, and history, switches the store over, and takes over from the Siren plugin. Every edition can move: Siren Affiliates, the free plugin, and Siren Essentials, Plus, and Pro. Once the store switches over, it doesn’t go back to running the Siren plugin. Connect a WordPress Site covers the connector itself and what keeps working on the store.

Before you start

• Update the Siren plugin to 3.6.263 or later. The Plugins screen shows the version. If it’s older, the connector waits and says “Update Siren to version … or later so the Siren Cloud Connector can move your store.”, and the Siren plugin keeps running. If the connector is the older one, it asks you to update the connector.
• Get the site’s records ready while the Siren plugin still runs. Siren Cloud refuses a record it can’t take, and any refused record stops the move before the store switches over. Fix these on the site first:
  • Give each program, program group, distributor, and collaborator group a name that no other record of its kind uses, on the site or in your Siren Cloud organization. Siren Cloud ignores capital letters when it compares names.
  • Correct any collaborator email address that isn’t a plain, valid address, such as one with an accented letter or a space.
  • Compare the codes on the Siren plugin’s Currencies screen with Settings > Currencies in Siren Cloud. A custom currency can’t use a code your organization already has, or a built-in currency’s code, such as USD. Store credit and currencies says what to do about each.
• The connector takes over at once. Once the plugin is up to date, activating the connector stops the Siren plugin, its Siren screens give way to “Connection settings”, and any work the plugin had queued, such as a recipe import, stops. Activate the connector when the store can go without the Siren screens for a while, and connect and approve it in the same sitting. Visits and sales on the store keep being recorded and wait for Siren Cloud.
• Use the right organization. Only an Admin can approve the site, and the approval screen has no organization picker, so switch to the organization you want in Siren Cloud first.
• Make sure Siren Cloud can reach the site. A staging site behind a login or on a private network can copy its data but can’t switch over.

Which plan you need

The connector estimates the Siren Cloud plan your store needs and shows it on Siren > Connection settings, in the “Siren Cloud” card before you connect and in the “Move to Siren Cloud” card after. The note calls the free plugin Siren Lite. The estimate takes the higher of two things: the plan that matches your edition, and the plan each paid feature you use needs.

Plan	Features that need it
Essentials	Program groups, distributors and distributions, custom currencies, store credit and automatic store credit payouts, lead and renewal conversions, fixed commissions per lead or per product, pooled, top score, and every-engagement commissions, and blog post, form, product, and course triggers
Plus	Collaborator groups, PayPal and Stripe payouts, customer filters, lifetime commissions, and sales CRM triggers
Pro	Upline and downline cascades, and ranked and parent-child collaborator groups

The note says whether your trial or plan covers the store, or which plan to choose. It never stops the move. After the switch, features your plan doesn’t include switch off on the store. Moving starts a free Pro trial for an organization that has never had one, as Plans, Trial, and Usage describes.

Move the store

The “Move to Siren Cloud” card works through eight steps, ticking each one off:

1. Find your Siren plugin and its data
2. Take over from your Siren plugin
3. Connect to your Siren Cloud organization
4. Hold new activity for Siren Cloud
5. Copy your data to Siren Cloud
6. Switch over to Siren Cloud
7. Send the held activity to Siren Cloud
8. Deactivate your old Siren plugin

While it copies, the card shows how many records are done. Activity on the store from the moment you activate the connector, such as visits and sales, waits and goes to Siren Cloud after the switch. Before the switch, the “Before you switch over” card lists any other plugin or theme on the site that reads Siren’s tables or hooks into Siren, since those may stop working after the switch. “Scan again” checks again.

The move carries on only when someone opens a WordPress admin page or WordPress runs its scheduled tasks, and on a quiet site those scheduled tasks run rarely. Ask your host to run WordPress cron from the server every minute so it keeps going, as Connect a WordPress Site suggests.

When the move is done, the card says the store runs on Siren Cloud, that the Siren plugin was deactivated and its data stays on the site, and that you should connect your payout provider in Siren Cloud next.

What moves and what stays

The move copies:

• Programs, with their triggers and settings, and collaborators, with their tracking and coupon codes and program enrollments.
• Visits and engagements, transactions, conversions, rewards, fulfillments, and payouts, with their statuses.
• Report totals, notes, and the store’s settings.
• From a Siren Essentials, Plus, or Pro store, program groups, distributors and their distributions, store credit, and custom currencies.
• From a Siren Plus or Pro store, collaborator groups and their members.

Siren Cloud rebuilds your customers, products, and coupon codes from what it copies, instead of copying them as they are.

These stay on the site: your Stripe and PayPal keys, collaborators’ PayPal addresses, automatic payout rules that pay by Stripe or PayPal, and notes about the organization.

Siren Cloud matches a program, program group, distributor, or collaborator group by name. If your organization already has one with the same name, or two on the site share a name, Siren Cloud keeps one record with its own settings and refuses the store’s settings for it, which stops the move, so rename those on the site before you start. Programs the move creates run only at the store’s Property. Sign-up forms keep adding people to the same programs, and a visitor referred before the move is still credited after it.

Payouts after the move

Connect Stripe or PayPal in Siren Cloud and choose a method for each currency, as Set Up Automatic Payouts describes. Payout settings don’t move, and neither do collaborators’ PayPal addresses, so each collaborator adds their PayPal email again on their portal’s Profile page, or you add it from their page.

Payouts the Siren plugin had queued to pay by Stripe or PayPal usually stay unpaid after the move, even though the card says Siren Cloud sends them once the copy is done. Pay them yourself first, so note those collaborators’ PayPal addresses before you activate the connector, while the Siren plugin’s screens still work. Then open their fulfillment under Reward > Fulfillments, select those payouts, and choose “Mark Paid”. Marking a payout paid sends no money, but the first time it also announces the payout as sent, so a collaborator may get an email saying the payout was sent. A queued store credit payout goes out on its own, since the store’s store credit payout rule moves with it and keeps paying out the store’s currencies.

Store credit and currencies

Before the copy, the connector settles any store credit spends the plugin had queued, so balances arrive exactly. Holds arrive as they were, and each custom currency is bound to the store’s Property.

Two kinds of currency stop the move:

• A custom currency that uses a built-in currency’s code. Siren Cloud refuses it and the rewards, payouts, and credit in it. Ask Siren support before you move.
• A custom currency whose code your organization already has, on a currency that isn’t bound to this store’s Property, for example from another store or one you made in Siren Cloud. The card reads “The migration stopped before it finished: Your organization already has a currency named …” and asks you to choose whether the store joins it, but no screen offers that choice yet, and running the migration again fails the same way. If that currency isn’t used yet, delete it under Settings > Currencies in Siren Cloud and run the migration again. Siren Cloud refuses the delete while rewards or payouts use the currency, or credit balances do unless you choose to delete them too, and deleting it deactivates any program that pays in it. If it’s in use, ask Siren support.

What collaborators get

• An active collaborator who’s new to your organization gets an email inviting them to set up their Siren Cloud account, with a link that works for 7 days.
• A collaborator your organization already has, from another store or Siren Cloud, gets a separate record for this store and an email asking them to confirm the store is theirs, with a link that works for 14 days.
• Siren Cloud refuses a collaborator whose email address isn’t valid, and a coupon or tracking code that another collaborator already holds, and either stops the move.

After the switch

The Siren plugin stays installed but deactivated, and its data stays on the site until you delete it. Keep the connector active, and don’t activate a Siren plugin on the store. A Siren plugin that’s activated beside the connector deactivates itself.

In WordPress, the Siren menu holds “Siren”, “Go to dashboard”, and “Connection settings”, and other Siren screens open Connection settings, which points you to Siren Cloud. You run programs, collaborators, and payouts in Siren Cloud, where the Property’s “WordPress site” card reads “Runs only on Siren Cloud”. The store can reconnect only to the same organization.

If the move stops

The card shows why, with “Run the migration again”. Running it again is safe, since records already copied are skipped. Until the store switches over, the Siren plugin keeps its data and the store’s activity keeps waiting. Common reasons:

• The plugin version changed. Update it as the message says, then run the migration again.
• Siren Cloud closed this store’s migration. The window stays open for 30 days after you approve the site, and closes when the move finishes. While the site is connected, an Admin clicks “Allow migration again” on the Property’s “WordPress site” card, which opens it for 30 more days. That needs an active plan.
• Some records couldn’t be copied. The card gives a count, not the records, and running the migration again refuses them again. You can deactivate the connector, which brings the Siren plugin back with its data, fix the records as Before you start lists, then activate the connector again and click “Run the migration again”. The card shows the old message until you do. A program, group, or distributor that Siren Cloud already matched by name stays matched, so for those, or if you can’t find the records, ask Siren support.
• Siren Cloud couldn’t reach the store. The store must be reachable from the internet to switch over.
• A store credit spend couldn’t be settled. Nothing is lost. Run it again in a moment.
• The store doesn’t send its events to Siren Cloud. Reinstall the Siren Cloud Connector, then run the migration again.

Disconnecting before the store switches over doesn’t bring the Siren plugin back, since it stays off while the connector is active. If you deactivate the connector before the switch, the Siren plugin runs again with its own data, and activating the connector later starts the move over. After the switch, disconnecting stops the store recording visits, sales, and leads until it reconnects.

Delete local data

After the switch, a WordPress administrator can remove the Siren plugin’s old data from the site with “Delete local data” on Connection settings. You type DELETE to confirm, and it can’t be undone. Siren Cloud keeps everything it copied.