This week, ABA IndieCommerce [5] announced a deadline extension for stores that have not yet received training on the migration of their sites to the new Drupal platform. The migration deadline for those stores is now November 1; however, booksellers who have received training before July 17 will still be required to migrate their websites to the new platform by September 1.

Booksellers who have already participated in a group training session but are having difficulties with the initial transition may request one-on-one online help from ABA in order to get their new sites up and working.

"In response to booksellers' requests, we are now offering one-on-one consultations to IndieCommerce stores that need help completing their sites' migration to Drupal," said ABA IndieCommerce Director Ricky Leung. "This is important as we are requiring that booksellers who completed their initial Drupal training before July 17 be live on the new system no later than Tuesday, September 1. This will enable ABA to focus our resources on enhancing the functionality of the new sites."

To be eligible for these extended, individual training sessions, a store needs to first complete several steps. Specifically, the store's current website content should already be migrated to the new Drupal site; the store should be in possession of an SSL certificate for the site; and a theme needs to have been chosen. As the purpose of this additional training is to help stores migrate, booksellers taking advantage of this opportunity should expect to have their site go live at the conclusion of the training session. For questions regarding these requirements, and/or to schedule a one-on-one training session, interested booksellers should contact IndieCommerce Director Ricky Leung [6].

For stores receiving training prior to July 17 that miss the September 1 migration deadline, ABA will step in and automatically migrate the site. ABA staff will select a random theme that seems appropriate for the store, migrate the current content over, adjust the menus and sidebars to approximate the store's current website, and push the new site live. Leung stressed that this move was necessary to expedite the migration of the entire IndieCommerce program to the new platform and to move along the development of new features for Drupal sites. "For quite a while now, we have been maintaining two platforms, and we need to be able to free staff up to develop more of the features that booksellers are asking for on the new platform."

Any store that has not yet set up an appointment for initial group training should contact IndieCommerce customer service at [email protected] [7]. Training sessions are generally scheduled for around noon Eastern Time on Mondays or Thursdays to allow stores in different time zones to participate at the same time and to afford enough time for participants to finish a session, which can run anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours.

In order to give stores an idea of how the site and the training works, ABA staff has created instructional videos [8], which can be accessed with a BookWeb log-in. --Rosemary Hawkins [9]