[wp-hackers] WordPress deployment/relocation steps

[Helen Hou-Sandi]

No, he's talking about serialized data in the database, which looks
something like
a:3:{s:18:"nav_menu_locations";a:1:{s:7:"primary";i:3;}s:12:"header_image";s:77:"
http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/headers/path.jpg";s:16:"background_color";s:6:"FFFFFF";}
. The s:# indicates the length of the string, and if the actual length of
the string does not match that number, that array will no longer be valid
and you will lose the use of whatever data is in there. In the case of what
I pasted over, you would lose any theme options you set, such as the nav
menu, header image, and background color. There's plenty of serialized data
in the WordPress database, and if your domain names are different lengths
you really should run a script of some kind to properly reserialize. It's
possible that you just haven't noticed something being wrong or you are
fortunate not to currently have anything immediately noticeable that uses
the serialized data, but that doesn't mean that nothing is breaking. There
are some tools out there to help you do this (e.g.
http://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/ -
not personally tested)

--
Helen Hou-Sandi
http://www.helenhousandi.com



On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 2:35 PM, James Tryon <james at easilyamusedinc.com>wrote:

> I think he's talking about re-salting your site.
>



> On Jun 27, 2011, at 2:20 PM, Justin W Hall wrote:
>
> >
> > On Jun 27, 2011, at 2:09 PM, Blue Chives wrote:
> >
> >> If olddomain isn't the same length as newdomain you will need to
> re-serialise the data help in the wp-options table.
> >>
> > Could you elaborate on this? Curious as to why I am not having trouble
> with this method even when domain names are not the same char lengths.
>