Mapping of Areas - areas aren't available until page type is used

[Mesuva]

This could simply be a limitation, so I'm more so adding this for the benefit of others.

When you have a batch and you map the areas between the import and the new site, not all of the available areas appear in the drop down list.

Generally at this point we only have a home page in the site and no other pages. What we've found is that we need to go to the home page and change its page template (i.e. in the Design panel) to other templates. After changing the page template, the list of available areas for mapping changes to show the newly found areas.

It's then a case of changing through some of the different templates until all areas are mapped. It might be easiest to create a couple of new dummy pages, of the different templates.

I've got a feeling this isn't resolvable (without doing something like directly analysing the page template files themselves), so what I've described is basically a simple workaround.

[aembler]

This is valid – the areas have to exist in the database in order for them to be shown in the list. If page templates containing the areas haven't been parsed then they won't exist in the database.

I could see adding some kind of functionality for scanning the active theme and updating the area list – this might be something that'd be useful in the core, as well.

[kpeeters]

@Mesuva I know this is an old thread, but would you mind guiding me through the steps to make those area's show up in the migration tool? No matter what I do in the Design panel, none of those areas every make it into the migration drop box. I have a theme with a single 'Main' area, and no matter what I add, that's the only area that ever appears.

[Mesuva]

The only thing that I could suggest is in the new areas that aren't appearing, putting some temporary content in, and then running through the migration mapping again. As Andrew mentions above, the areas have to be in the database in some way, not just an empty area in a template file.