Before you deactivate, and how to export
Your programmes, instructors and sessions are rows in your own WordPress database. Nothing about them is stored in the theme, on our servers or in any account. This page says exactly what happens to them when you change theme, switch the companion plugin off, or remove it — and how to take a copy first.
Changing theme keeps everything
Lumina Edu Core owns the three content types and their fields. The theme only draws them. Switch to any other theme and every programme, instructor and session stays exactly where it was, with every field intact, still editable in the admin, still in the REST API.
What you lose by changing theme is the presentation: the Matchboard sentence, the departure board, the timetable, the patterns and the styles. The records survive the change; the look does not travel with them.
Deactivating the plugin
Deactivating Lumina Edu Core does not delete anything. It unregisters the three content types, and a content type that is not registered has no public URL.
| Address | Plugin active | Plugin deactivated |
|---|---|---|
A single programme, /program/<slug>/ |
The programme page | WordPress redirects the visitor to your home page (HTTP 301) |
A single instructor, /instructor/<slug>/ |
The instructor page | WordPress redirects the visitor to your home page (HTTP 301) |
| The Programs, Instructors and Sessions pages | The live directories | Still HTTP 200, showing the saved static text each block kept |
| Pages, posts, media, menus | Unchanged | Unchanged |
So a visitor who follows a link to a single programme does not see an error page and does not see the programme — they land on your home page. That is WordPress's own behaviour for an address whose content type is no longer registered, not a redirect the plugin performs.
In the admin, the Programs, Instructors and Sessions menus disappear, because the screens belong to the types. The rows are still in the database. Reactivate the plugin and everything comes back at the same addresses, unchanged; no re-import, no repair step.
Two things worth knowing before you deactivate:
- Visit Settings → Permalinks and choose Save Changes after reactivating if a single programme address does not resolve straight away. That rewrites the URL rules; nothing is lost either way.
- The saved static text inside the pages the demo imported is what keeps those pages readable with the plugin off. If you replaced those blocks with your own, check them while the plugin is off before you rely on it.
Uninstalling the plugin
Deleting the plugin in Plugins → Installed Plugins → Delete runs its uninstall routine. It removes only what the plugin wrote about itself:
| Removed at uninstall | What it is |
|---|---|
lumina_edu_core_site_facts |
The Site details record you filled in under the plugin's settings |
lumina_edu_core_* transients |
Short-lived values: an enquiry rate-limit count, a booking-row notice, a draft-refusal reason |
lumina_edu_core_enquiry_retention |
The daily scheduled clean-up the enquiry retention setting uses |
Not removed: programmes, instructors, sessions and every field on them; their taxonomy terms; pages, posts, media, menus and users. Install the plugin again and the records are there, with their types registered once more.
The one exception is your own choice: the Northline demo reset at Appearance → Demo reset deletes records on purpose. It is the only thing in this plugin that deletes content, it asks for a typed confirmation, and it only ever selects records carrying the Northline importer's marker. See demo import and reset.
Export a copy first
Take an export before any of this — before a theme change, before deactivating, and certainly before deleting the plugin. WordPress has the exporter built in, and it writes a file you can import into any WordPress site.
- Go to Tools → Export.
- Choose All content to take everything in one file, including your pages, posts and media references. This is the safe default.
- To take only the structured records, choose the three types instead, one export each: Programs, Instructors and Sessions.
- Choose Download Export File and keep the
.xmlfile somewhere off the server.
The three types appear in that list only while Lumina Edu Core is active, because the exporter can only offer a registered type. Export before you deactivate, not after.
Two limits of a WordPress export, so nothing surprises you later:
- It carries posts, their fields and their terms. It does not carry the Site details record, because that is a site option rather than content. Note those values down, or take a database backup, if you need them.
- It references media files by URL; the files themselves live in
wp-content/uploads. A full site backup, or your host's backup, is what covers those.
A whole-site backup covers everything an export does and more. An export is the portable copy; a backup is the safety net. Take both before you delete anything.