Disable plugins prior to migration?

Deactivating plugins is more of a precaution than a necessity. The active/inactive status should not affect which plugins are migrated. However it’s conceivable it could make a difference with certain migration tools. Despite that chance, I recommend deactivating before migration. You can always install or copy over plugin files after the fact on the off chance inactive plugins don’t get migrated. I think the chance of that is very small.

Deactivating plugins before migration prevents any plugins from possibly corrupting the migration process. It’s unlikely they would, but there’s always a small chance one could do so. If you were to migrate with active plugins anyway, there’s unlikely to be a problem due to active plugins. There could be other problems, but not due to active plugins.

Thanks bcworkz. I think I’m going to start referring to you as my guardian angel ??

I was successful :-)) (waahooo!)

I’m not using any migration tool and doing everything manually. So there was never much chance of a migration tool being corrupted (just me). I’m not using managed WP hosting either, so I’m learning to manage everything myself. I’m having fun and my wife thinks I’m crazy <g>

I used notepad++ to manually search/replace the staging db contents and deleted 2407 instances of “stg.” from all the URLs (stg.website.com -> website.com) and then transferred its contents to a new db used by website.com.

After installing multi-site (sub-folders) WordPress in website.com I edited the htaccess and wp-config files, uploaded the wp-content copied from the staging site, said a prayer, pushed the “Engage!” button and it opened perfectly <whew>

Next time it’ll probably only take about 15-20 minutes to download, edit (remove “stg.”), and upload the staging db to the live site.

R

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by rpmtl22.

You’re welcome! I was tempted to set my profile title to “Guardian Angel” but then decided that’d be too egocentric ?? (titles are no longer used but those with powers can still set them. If they exist they appear under our display names for all topics and replies)

I’m learning to manage everything myself. I’m having fun and my wife thinks I’m crazy <g>

I’m glad you’re having fun, but be careful, that’s how I started out as well. Now I’m here spending my spare time helping out others. My wife has resigned herself to me being crazy ages ago ??

I used notepad++ to manually search/replace the staging db

That’s probably fine in your case, but as a general rule you shouldn’t do that. If you should alter an URL that’s stored in a serialized array, you’ll very likely corrupt the array’s structure. Fortunately, it’s unusual to save URLs this way, but the possibility exists. Instead of using notepad++, you should use a tool that can properly manage serialized arrays. One option is the Better Search and Replace plugin. You at least would need to manually modify the site and home URL settings in the options table so that your site is accessible, but leave the rest for the plugin to manage.

The plugin is based upon the inter.connect search and replace script. While this is not a WP plugin, you can download from its source and install it on your server. Then make requests directly to its installation folder. This script offers more features than the free version of the plugin. The plugin offers a “pro” version with all features, but you can get them all from the inter.connect script at no cost.