Archive a site

System or site administrators can archive any site in the General site admin screen.

System administrators can also use the Full site list.

Archiving a site means that:

1. Archived sites are not visible to any user. An archived site will not appear in the list of sites on the Dashboard nor in any other place where a list of sites might be shown (searching, notifications setting page, etc.)
2. An archived site cannot be accessed by any user except for system administrators
3. No emails or other automated communications will emanate from an archived site
4. A system administrator can access an archived site only by running a site search from the full site list

Archiving a site does not do any of the following:

1. Automatically delete or remove content from the site
2. Automatically remove users from the site or change user permissions
3. Affect in any way the audit records for a site. All of the records related to actions that took place in a site will remain

An archived site can be unarchived at any time and the site will not have changed in any way. If content should be deleted at the time that a site is archived, this needs to take place separately. For example, a bulk download of all files to a ZIP file can be initiated for offline storage. Once that is complete, a site administrator can delete all the files (and then permanently delete files if required), in which case the files will no longer be part of the archived site. However, the audit records concerning those permanently deleted records will remain as part of the site.

There is no way to completely delete all record of a site and its related audit information. Instead, a site can be archived and content in that site can be deleted.