While in general, it should not be much of an issue to switch the site type, there are pitfalls and glitches you should know about to possibly apply some preventive measures. These are:

Depending on the approach you are using to change the site type (thus, if automated or within CoreMedia Studio), as well as depending on the direction of the type switch, some of these may be taken as additional preconditions to consider before changing the site type in addition to those mentioned in Section 4.7, “Preconditions for Comprehensive Changes”. Latest they should be considered as part of a clean-up process after the type change.

Invalid, Missing, or Irritating Ignore Updates Flag

You may want to validate the flag ignoreUpdates, remove it, where it is invalid or irritating, or set it, where it is now needed.

Property to Ignore Updates

Technically, the flag to ignore updates is defined at content-type CMLocalized as an integer property ignoreUpdates. In CoreMedia Studio, this flag is better known as a property labeled as Keep synchronized with Master.

For more information, see Section 4.7.4.3, “Removing Content Permanently from Synchronization” in Studio User Manual.

From Synchronization to Translation.  When you switch from synchronization to translation, you may experience glitches for contents that were previously marked to ignore updates. As for translation sites, this flag is hidden (but still stored in content), it may cause false-positive signals for the content not to retrieve updates from its master site. This again is wrong, as typical translation workflow implementations ignore this flag. To prevent this glitch, you may want to either remove the flag before changing the site type or ensure that the contents are later updated by other means like a Unified API client.

From Translation to Synchronization.  If switching from translation to synchronization, you may observe, that the flag to ignore updates is set, although it is neither relevant nor visible for translation sites. While there may be several causes for this (like copy and paste between sites) it may be a good idea to review these flags and remove them if not needed. Or the other way round, you may want to set the flag for contents that are not supposed to receive updates from the master site anymore.

Danger of Auto-Merge Conflicts

Due to different usage patterns for localization with respect to how properties are handled, you may experience conflicts for your next localization workflow due to unexpected property states. Find some possible countermeasures here.

From Synchronization to Translation.  In general, there are not much more issues to expect when changing the type from synchronization to translation. However, if you had content items in the synchronized site, that were marked to not get updates from the master, they may meanwhile have diverged from the master site in an incompatible way. You may want to take special care of these contents. One possible way to address this issue is before switching the site type by disabling the flag and running the synchronization workflow with overwrite enabled as conflict resolution option.

From Translation to Synchronization.  For translation sites, it is more natural, that values of content properties diverge from the master site. Before continuing to operate the site, you may want to overwrite all possible conflicts. The synchronization workflow can be used for this intend, enabling the overwrite conflict handling.