Upgrading a website built with TOWeb V4 or older

Yes but TOWeb 12 will only keep paragraph texts and pictures. The theme and layout will be lost, since the brand new rewritten website engine included in TOWeb V12 intensively uses the latest web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 or the responsive design approach. Some features included in TOWeb from the first version released in 2005 are now unsuited to these technologies or considered as outdated / bad practices on modern websites.

• the theme engine has been 100% rewritten with extensive use of CSS3, requiring you to change your website design (you may use one of our 182 themes templates)
• website will not be displayed correctly by old web browsers especially Internet Explorer versions less or equal to version 12 (an alert will be displayed and invite the user to upgrade)
• MS Word & Excel documents are no longer imported (PDF files can be proposed for download instead)
• no real-time spellchecker
• playing music while visiting the website is no more possible (bad unrecommended intrusive practice)
• slideshows of images in paragraphs are not imported (no longer compatible but still possible to create new ones)
• tables inside paragraphs are not imported (no longer compatible but still possible to create new ones)
• smileys in texts (but you can add icons), falling objects and page transitions
• flash animations (not working on Apple iOS devices)
• tabbed paragraphs
• scrolling paragraphs
• translated texts of multilingual former websites won't be imported since the translations are now directly entered in the editor of each page (no more separate translation window for the entire site)
• glossary (but you can use abbreviation in the text editor)
• "bitmap" image frames (not suitable for non flat backgrounds like CSS3 gradients)

Yes, and we recommend this workflow. Importing a former website in TOWeb version 12 will make a copy of the site before converting it. This allows you to continue to maintain and publish your website with your version 1/2/3/4 of TOWeb while working on your new website with the version 12. When your new website is ready, just publish it to your host space.

For a former TOWeb user, the version 5 and above are a big step forward to responsive website. You will love the new live preview and the WYSIWYG editing : no more **wiki** syntax to format your texts or create links as well as the possibility to add multiple images in a paragraph to display a slideshow or different view of a product. The 100% new HTML5+CSS3 code generated by TOWeb does not only produce beautiful websites but it is also much better suited for quality search engine ranking (no more subdirectories or redirection in the home page). But the main reason to upgrade is to get a responsive website in order for visitors using smartphones, tablets or desktops to all enjoy discovering and surfing your website !

For more information :

List of all the major new features of TOWeb (from version 5 to version 12)

The new features of TOWeb V11 (compared to TOWeb V10)
The new features of TOWeb V10 (compared to TOWeb V9)
The new features of TOWeb V9 (compared to TOWeb V8)
The new features of TOWeb V8 (compared to TOWeb V7)
The new features of TOWeb V7 (compared to TOWeb V6)
The new features of TOWeb V6 (compared to TOWeb V5)