Before you deactivate, and how to export
Your programs, sessions, instructors, departments, campuses, delivery options and deadlines 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 content types, their fields and Site details. The theme only draws them. Switch to any other theme and every record 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 finder sentence over the photograph, the departure board, the slots, the homes, the patterns, the styles and the motion. 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 its content types, and a content type that is not registered has no public URL.
| Address | Plugin active | Plugin deactivated |
|---|---|---|
A single program, /program/<slug>/ |
The program 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) |
| A department's or a campus's own page | The department or campus page | No page: the address no longer belongs to anything |
| The homes and the inner pages | Sections read your records | Still there, each plugin section showing the still example saved inside it |
| Pages, posts, media, menus | Unchanged | Unchanged |
So a visitor who follows a link to a single program does not see an error page and does not see the program — 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 and Instructors menus (with Sessions, Departments, Campuses and the rest under them) and Settings → Site details disappear, because the screens belong to the plugin. 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 program address does not resolve straight away. That rewrites the URL rules; nothing is lost either way.
- The still examples inside the pages the demo imported are what keep those pages readable with the plugin off. They are the example school's, not yours: they name its programs, tutors, hours and telephone. If you rely on the theme without the plugin, check every page while it is off. Pattern and template reference lists them.
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, including the opening hours, the questions and answers and the chosen contact form |
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: programs, sessions, instructors, departments, campuses, delivery options, deadlines 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 their types instead, one export each: Programs, Instructors, Sessions, and the campus catalog's types.
- Choose Download Export File and keep the
.xmlfile somewhere off the server.
The 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 — your address, telephone, opening hours, questions and answers — because that is a site option rather than content. Copy 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.