Blog Migration + Domain Name Change

Hi Jess,

As you may already know, the editorial calendar shows the content on your WordPress site. In other words, if you install Nelio Content on a new site, you’ll see all your posts automatically.

Now, when you say you’re “not sure how to handle the calendar,” I assume you mean you don’t know how to move your existing social messages, tasks, etc? Well, I’m afraid that’s more complicated. Here’s why/how.

Social Messages and tasks are all store in our cloud. Our plugin accesses this information using a couple of wp_options that identify your site uniquely: nc_site_id and nc_api_secret. If you copied these wp_options into your new site, our cloud would think this new site is your old site, and so you’d have access to all the data you had.

However, social messages and tasks are usually linked to posts via the post’s ID. So, when you move your content from the subdomain to your main domain, you have to make sure all the posts keep their IDs (which may or may not be feasible, I don’t know), or things won’t work as expected.

Regarding your settings, some of them are stored in our cloud, others are stored locally on your WordPress server. Therefore, if you want to move all Nelio Content’s data to the new site, you’ll have to:

1. Not only copy nc_site_id and nc_api_secret, but also all nc_* options.
2. Copy the nelio-content_settings option.
3. Move all nc_reference post types.
4. Move all nc_task_preset post types.

Thanks so much for your quick response, @davilera! Yes, confirmed, it is the social messages and tasks we’re concerned about.

However,?social messages and tasks are usually linked to posts via the post’s ID. So, when you move your content from the subdomain to your main domain, you have to?make sure all the posts keep their IDs?(which may or may not be feasible, I don’t know), or things won’t work as expected.

Unfortunately, it’s not going to be feasible for the posts to retain their IDs. They’ll end up with new IDs after the import.

Brainstorming solutions here… are the post IDs stored in your cloud, or are those only stored in the database? Any suggestions on best options here?

I really appreciate the guide to the database storage! I’ll take a look at those tables today and try to get a better picture of what we’re working with on the site-side.

Also, I’m seeing this notice on the Plugins page of our development site when I look at Nelio Content:

Warning!?This site has been identified as a?staging site?and, as a result, you can’t use any of Nelio Content’s features. If this is not correct and you want to use Nelio Content normally, please?follow these instructions.

But when I click on the link, it takes me to this page, which is a 404: https://neliosoftware.com/content/help/modify-list-of-staging-urls/

Thank you!

Brainstorming solutions here… are the post IDs stored in your cloud, or are those only stored in the database? Any suggestions on best options here?

Let me think… there’s a few things we can hopefully do to fix the issue, I think. First and foremost, I’m wondering the following: would you be interested in migrating only the messages that haven’t been published yet and the posts related to unpublished posts? That would make things a little bit easier, because we could save some work by simply ignoring past tasks and messages…

Also, is it possible that a migrated post’s new ID is equal to the ID of an old post? For instance, let’s say we had:

OLD IDS
Post A: 25
Post B: 26

and, after the migration, we have:

NEW IDS
Post A: 26 (WARNING: it's like old post B)
Post B: 27

If that were the case, would it be possible to migrate your posts so that such an overlap does not exist? For instance:

FIXED NEW IDS (NO OVERLAPS)
Post A: 925
Post B: 926

If we could guarantee these two things, then I think I’d be able to help you with the migration of posts and tasks as well.

I’m seeing this notice on the Plugins page of our development site when I look at Nelio Content. But when I click on the link, it takes me to this page, which is a 404.

We fixed the 404 error codes in our knowledge base — there was an issue with our permalinks. Sorry for that.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by David Aguilera.

Thank you so much for all those details, @davilera! After some discussion and consideration, I think we’ve decided to start with a fresh install of Nelio Content on the destination site, and manually recreate any future tasks and messages.

Given that, what steps do we need to take to ensure that no posts are sent out from the origin site (or from the Nelio cloud based on the origin site) after the migration is done? Is a simple deactivation of the Nelio Content plugin on the origin site sufficient, or do we need to do more?

After some discussion and consideration, I think we’ve decided to start with a fresh install of Nelio Content on the destination site

That’s great! I think you made the right decision.

Given that, what steps do we need to take to ensure that no posts are sent out from the origin site (or from the Nelio cloud based on the origin site) after the migration is done? Is a simple deactivation of the Nelio Content plugin on the origin site sufficient, or do we need to do more?

To be absolutely certain that nothing will be shared, just follow these steps:

1. Remove all the profiles in the old setup
2. Deactivate the plugin in the old setup and, on the popup it opens, select the option “Delete Nelio Content’s data and deactivate plugin”

That’s it!

@davilera – Another question for you! We completed our migration yesterday, but I think we may have gone wrong with the Nelio portion due to moving our paid license. Here’s what happened:

1. We installed Nelio Content, clean install, on opensource.org
2. We activated our Nelio Content license there, which means the license disconnected on blog.opensource.org (the original site)
3. When I go to blog.opensource.org, I can no longer see anything scheduled in the future except events pulled in from an ICS feed
4. Taking a look at the database on blog.opensource.org, I have no entries for nc_task_preset post types
5. I have a number of entries for nc_reference post types, but don’t see any place for a future scheduled date where I might be able to see what was schedule in the future and reconstruct it

I was not the person who moved the license, so I can’t confirm whether or not any of the content deletion steps were taken as a part of that. But I do see lots of items on the Calendar up today, when the license was moved.

What are our next best steps to retrieve any future scheduled tasks / posts, etc. so that we can recreate them on opensource.org? If I flip the license back over to blog.opensource.org, would they reappear so I can then use that as a guide to manually recreate them?

Thank you!

Oh, no! In order to use the same license in a new site, one has to first remove it from the original site, which means the original site is downgraded from premium to free. Free sites have no tasks, single profiles per network, etc, so a downgrade means that any premium features are permanently removed.

I didn’t realize you planned to move the license directly without saving your current tasks and messages somewhere (there’s even an option in the calendar to download the current view in CSV format), so it never occurred to me to mention this.

When did you remove the license from the original site? If we’re lucky, we might still be able to recover your tasks, if we still have the activity logs from that day. Perhaps even the social messages, even though that one will be more complicated.

@davilera – I hadn’t planned to! Sadly, someone else moved it – I hadn’t thought to warn them not to.

The license was removed from the original site some time between Feb 21st and Feb 22nd. It was there PT EOD on Feb 21st, and had been moved when I logged in on Feb 22nd. If there is any way to recover data from your end, that would be so appreciated!

I hadn’t planned to! Sadly, someone else moved it – I hadn’t thought to warn them not to.

I know, Jess. I hadn’t thought to warn you not to either. I feel like it’s partially my fault! ??

[…] If there is any way to recover data from your end, that would be so appreciated!

Thanks for the info. We’ll look into it on Monday. I can’t promise you anything, but we’ll do our best. Fingers crossed!

Hi, Jess. I just realized you never mentioned your (old) website — we need it to look into our logs. Please share it here or send us an email at: support at nelio software dot com.

@davilera – the old site is blog.openource.org, the new site is just opensource.org (no subdomain).

Thank you!

Morning, @jlundie. We reviewed our logs on Februrary 19th (i.e. a couple of days before your site was downgraded to free) and we were able to recover 169 unpublished social messages and 1 editorial task. Does this sound right?

Please contact us via email (support at nelio software dot com) using an email on opensource.org and we’ll send you the data.