[wp-hackers] [GSoC 2011] Moving Wordpress

[Ken Newquist]

On Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:50:42 +0530 Piyush Mishra <me at piyushmishra.com> wrote:

> Moving a WP from one install to another server for a new domain means
> changing the guid in [wp_]posts, updating site_url n home.
> Taking mysql dump, zipping wp-contents and importing all of that on the new
> server right?

The problem I've had with moving a site from development to production (and back again) has always been with the serialized data for plugins and widgets. When the data's serialized, it includes a string count. This isn't a problem if the domain name is going to stay the same, but if the number of characters in the name does change (e.g. foo-dev.bar.com to foo.bar.com) then the serialized data counts are off. That causes PHP errors when it tries to unserialize the data; that in turn can cause plugins to load without any of their setting information.

This can be a big headache when moving large sites through the dev/stage/prod migration path. I've handled it in the past with a script that loads the serialized data from a test database, then re-serializes it with the new URL.

Ken

--
Ken Newquist
Web Applications Specialist
Lafayette College
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