If your Site Owner has lapsed, you will need to submit a Request for change to appoint a new Site Owner first.
How to request site deactivation
- Go to Site Settings > Site Details 'Request deactivation of site'
- Complete the required information and submit the request
What you need to know before requesting deactivation
- Site deactivation cannot proceed if you have any sites listed in Site Settings > Content Sharing because those sites would lose access to the content they are currently consuming from your site. You will need to advise these Site Owners of your intention to deactivate your site and agree a period of time for them to take the appropriate action before you submit the site deactivation request.
- You will be asked to specify a date for your site to be deactivated. The default is today's date and you can use this if you want deactivation to be processed as soon as possible. If your site is chargeable, you may wish to submit the request for deactivation after the end of the charging period. If you prefer for your site to be deactivated during the charging period, please note it won't be possible to provide a refund.
- Once your site is deactivated you will not be able to log in. Your site will no longer be visible, and content will no longer be accessible.
- Depending on the purpose of your site and what content you provide, you may want to consider adding a notice on your Home page ahead of submitting the deactivation request to warn site visitors access to the site will cease after your specified date.
What happens to the site after deactivation
When the Mosaic team receive a request to deactivate your site, the following actions will be done:
- The site settings will be changed to hide the site from search engine indexing. This means that search engines will be asked not to index the site; it does not mean that the site will immediately stop being displayed in relevant search engine results—it may take some time before the site stops being displayed in search results. If it is time-critical, you can ask Google to remove your site from their search.
- Any custom domains for the site will be removed from the Mosaic platform's SSL certificate. Once this is done, anyone who browses to the custom domain(s) will see a security warning in their browser.
While a site is in a deactivated state
- The site will be kept in a 'Deactivated' status for 12 months from the date the request was completed.
- The Site Owner will be able to request an export of the deactivated site via the Request a change webform. The export can contain the currently published site pages as HTML and/or a .zip of the site files.
- If your site uses a custom domain, it is the responsibility of the Site Owner to arrange for the domain to be de-registered by their domain manager.
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A Site Owner can request the reactivation of their site within the 12 months following the site deactivation request, at which point the site will become visible and editable once again. Submit a request for reactivation by using the
site reactivation service request form.
Final Site Deletion!
- Once the 12 month 'Deactivated' period has elapsed, the Site Owner will be emailed a final notification about pending site deletion. The site and all content on it will be deleted from the Mosaic platform database. Once this happens, the content will be permanently deleted and can no longer be recovered.
