Silvia Macovei, Head of Cloud BusinessThe Cloud offers a lot of benefits for businesses, from easy setup to increased flexibility and the ability to scale. It's no wonder many companies are moving their data to the cloud. However, this also means they are becoming more reliant on service providers. When considering a new provider, it's important to evaluate lock-in risks and analyze migration strategies. This way your data won't get trapped inside the new tool.
With XWiki being Open Source, you know upfront you won't run into lock-in. You can easily move content from your cloud wiki to on-premise installations. The same process can be followed when you're looking to move your content from your existing on-premise wiki to the cloud. You can choose to export a single page, a set of pages, or even your whole instance.
The exported file will have a XAR format (XWiki ARchive), which you can then import on-premise from the wiki Administration.
Most of the time what you need to export are the pages that were created/edited and the extension pages that were modified. Starting with XWiki 11.10 you'll notice that by default you are prompted to export the Created and modified pages. This is the safest option. Alternatively, if you were to export and import the whole wiki (including the XWiki space), you could end up breaking the installation, particularly if the wiki you are importing the file to has a different version.
To export the created and modified pages you should go to the XWiki Administration > Content > Export as shown below.
The XAR archive can afterward be imported into the second instance from XWiki Administration > Content > Import.
Note this feature should only be used to move pages from one instance to another or to perform a lightweight backup of your wiki pages. It is not meant to replace a proper backup. Backups are automatically performed on cloud. If you are running XWiki locally, you can make a backup by following the documentation.
