Incomplete backup/restore

Thank you for using Prime Mover plugin! Sorry to hear you have issues in backup and restore. We tried to reproduce the issues using both WordPress 6.3.4 and WordPress 6.4.4 using Prime Mover 1.9.8. In all testing instances – we are not able to reproduce the issue.

To ensure that the tested package includes media, plugins, database – the complete export mode is used to create the package. The detailed steps we tested are as follows:

• Setup a complete working test site in WordPress 6.3.4.
• Install Prime Mover 1.9.8 (FREE).
• Install and activate Prime Mover 1.9.8.
• Create a backup of the site in WordPress 6.3.4.
• Reset site back to fresh WordPress install.
• Delete plugins/themes media files in uploads directory.
• Re-activate Prime Mover 1.9.8
• Restore the package in WordPress 6.3.4 – Result: The site restored completely including full database, media and plugins/themes.
• Upgrade WordPress version to 6.4.4
• Backup a complete export using Prime Mover 1.9.8.
• Setup another site in WordPress 6.4.4.
• Restore the package. Result: The package restored to another site in WordPress 6.4.4 was completed including database, media and plugins/themes.

We tested using PHP 7.4 (which is the most common PHP version used by users in these WP versions). We are closing this ticket here since it’s not reproducible.

If you still need technical assistance – please provide us a complete migration logs as well as the WPRIME package by following the steps here. Please take note that these logs or WPRIME packages are not meant to be shared publicly here in this forum – so please share it only to the developers. Thank you!

Hello,

Thank you for your help and for trying to recreate the issue.
I will try other troubleshooting before I send over a log.

I found your help page https://codexonics.com/prime_mover/prime-mover/post-migration-troubleshooting-tips-and-advices/ because it related to missing images and finished all suggestions and my issue did not change, so its not one of these.

I will try this next and see if it helps https://codexonics.com/prime_mover/prime-mover/how-to-migrate-very-large-wordpress-sites-by-parts/ .

What I have noticed is that there is a new theme, a blank theme, that is in the recreated target site. It looks blank like a child theme. I am using a child theme as the active theme in the source site, but it is not the active theme in the target site after migration. I’m wondering if my child theme is missing something in the stylesheet style.css that PM requires. The child theme stylesheet only has the Theme Name and Template. Does PM need more?

I’m also receiving error messages the site was not able to migrate on 50% of attempts; on the other 50% is says complete but then has the missing pages and selected theme and media, etc. On the attempts failed with error messages, there is always just one error, and it always relates to different plugins saying that they need to be deactivated and deleted on the target site because of license issues. But they were not on the target site previously, it was a blank WP install, and there are no license issues these are free plugins.

If any of the above leads you to think of any clues for me, Please let me know. Otherwise I will be back later to give updates. Hopefully the partial migration techniques will work.

Sincerely,
JJ

Hello JJ,

Thank you for the follow-up reply! Yes regarding your question – Prime Mover does require child theme having complete headers in it’s style.css such as version number, etc. This is used to compare the theme versions between the source and target site.

So as a suggestion, make sure to have a complete child theme style.css header. It’s usually the best practice to have complete header information. It’s because you will know (or other plugins know) that you are using a different child theme version – so it can decide whether it’s outdated or a more recent one.

You can update your child theme style.css in the source site as follows (with complete info):

Theme Name: Your Child Theme Name
 Theme URI: https://yourchildtheme.test/
 Description: Your child theme description.
 Author: YourChildTHemeAuthor
 Author URI: https://yourchildtheme.test/
 Template: yourparentthemeslug
 Version: 1.0

Regarding the third party plugins license issues – maybe it requires activation again after the migration on target site (consult other plugins docs) – it is why you see a warning. But this should not cause any fatal error or missing data.

However take note that if you are migrating from multisite to single-site, there are some plugins that are not meant to be used on single-sites. Remember to exclude these multisite only plugins (you can deactivate them first in the source site before exporting). It is because sometimes these plugins return fatal error when activated on the single-site- thus causing incomplete migration.

Once you have all the info updated (e.g. your child theme style.css headers) – try creating an export again using Prime Mover latest version. And check if it resolves the issue.

In addition – the migrate by parts approach is also useful, you can try that as well if the above suggestions still does not work. It allows you migrate the database only via Prime Mover thus removing any possible incompatibility issues with your plugins / themes or even media files since these are moved manually to your target site.

As always – we are willing to assist further if you want to share some logs and troubleshooting information (please refer to my first reply) so we can reproduce this issue in our end. Thank you again!

Cheers,

Emerson

Hello, thank you for your reply.
I have an update. I did the following steps:
-On source site, i activated the backup theme (2020) and deleted all other themes Kadence parent and child.
-On source site, i deleted all transient entries in the cache, cleared the cache, disabled the cache, ran repair and optimize on the database.
-On source site, i ran PM again to create migration file, and I copied this to the target site.
-On target site, I deleted all media, pages, plugins except PM, and all themes except 2020.
-On target site, i enabled debug log as per your instructions.
-On target site, i deleted all transient entries in the cache, cleared the cache, disabled the cache, ran repair and optimize on the database.
-On target site, i logged out and back in.
-On target site, i ran the migration with the latest package.
-On target site, pop up said it was successful. But there were no media, no pages, no other themes (even though they were not active, shouldn’t they have transfered?) (there was the one blank theme again, even though there was no child theme), only the plugins that were active on source site at time of backup (shouldn’t all plugins be transferred whether active or not?).
-On target site, there was no debug.log to be found in the entire file system; maybe this is because there was no error reported.

I have sent all other requested details via your support contact form, please look for that message subject ‘Re: JJ’. Particularly, my child theme style.css and functions.php files, please look at these and let me know if they are satisfactory.

Thank you,
JJ

Hello JJ,

Thanks for the logs. What is strange is that the log says you are using TwentyTwenty Theme. But in your screenshots after restore – the theme is not activated but instead it activates a missing theme.

We are now requesting also your WPRIME package to see if we could reproduce the same issue as your target site so we can debug this properly. You can reply to this request in the same way you send us those logs. Thanks again!

Cheers,

Emerson

Thank you for all of your help.

Sent.

Hello JJ,

Thanks for the package. We are able to reproduce the error and it looks like there is a problem with the package. It’s missing dB prefix from your source site server and your SQL file is a bit corrupted. It is why this could not be restored completely. This issue is not on the target site but on the way the package was created/exported (on the source site).

This should be set correctly during export but for some unknown reason your source site server seems to produce incorrect results. We didn’t able to reproduce this with any server and it’s our first time this issue has occurred.

I think there is something strange about your source site server setup. Would it be possible to share your source site logs as follows:

• Source site information logs: Login into source site and then go to Prime Mover -> Advanced -> Upload/Download Parameters -> Export site info –> click “Export site info” button.

• Export migration logs: Login into source site and then go to Prime Mover -> Advanced -> Debugging Tools -> Download log -> click “Download log file” button.

We would like to check how your source site is being setup and hopefully it can reveal clues into this problem. Please send it in the way you sent those previous logs. Thank you!

Cheers,

Emerson

Thank you again for all of your help.

Sent.

Yes you are correct I looked there is no prefix. Usually, I set this to wp_.

I should let you know that I have a third wordpress installation that I haven’t mentioned yet. This is a very old installation, on a different URL, different database, on the same server. I just tried restoring a very old wprime backup which doesn’t have a child theme to this location and it worked fine. I have those logs as well if you would like to look at them.

• This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by JJulien.

Hello JJ,

Thank you for the latest logs! Very helpful and indeed – we have found the root cause of this issue. Your site wp-config.php file has an empty database table prefix, which is not supported by Prime Mover plugin. This is the how it is shown in your logs:

                            [database_prefix] => Array
                                (
                                    [label] => Table prefix
                                    [value] => 
                                    [private] => 1
                                )

See that the value is empty. I think that site is a very old WordPress installation which was first created before WordPress 3.4 where there is a core WordPress bug that allows installation of sites that have empty database prefix.

Now with latest WordPress versions – this is no longer allowed. If anyone tries to install a new WordPress site with empty database prefix – it is blocked by WordPress core and could not be installed.

Table prefix is mandatory because it tells what sites to migrate (e.g. particularly if its multisite) and lot of plugins relies on the table prefix information (particularly backup and migration plugins like Prime Mover). It is why it is required by WordPress today.

In your case – since your site does not have dB prefix, really sorry but Prime Mover could not be used to migrate this site. Your workaround is first to add a table prefix to your site (by configuring it via wp-config.php) before you can use again Prime Mover to migrate the site. There is a tutorial on this one here if you like to know this process.

Also if you do this – it’s all up to you and we could not assist this since it’s now beyond the scope of Prime Mover plugin and support.

Also we added a check inside Prime Mover that will block the activation of this plugin on sites that have empty database table prefix. This will be added starting Prime Mover 1.9.9. This will ensure that the plugin could only be activated in sites with dB prefix set.

Thanks again for your cooperation in finding out the cause of this issue.

Cheers,

Emerson

• This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by Codexonics. Reason: Typo

Thank you! I have just added the prefix and will try again. I will update you with any news.

You also mentioned that ‘SQL file is a bit corrupted’. Do you have other suggestions for this?

• This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by JJulien.

Thanks JJ, take note that it is not a simple as adding the prefix on wp-config.php as there are some database tables (usermeta and options table in particular or even custom plugin dB tables) that still hard code the old empty dB prefix which you need to change also. I will recommend to take a look at the tutorials that I’ve shared.

Also before exporting the site with Prime Mover – please double check both front end and back-end of your site (including user roles, capabilities) to make sure it fully works after you add the table prefix. This will ensure that the site functionality is correct before you export it. This will make the import check easier because we are sure that the source site is working as expected. Thanks again!

• This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by Codexonics. Reason: typo

Your find is important not just for PM function but for my whole site, so I am grateful for you finding that issue.

I have tried different tutorials including the one you suggested, and none have worked for me. In my opinion the best thing to do is to rebuild the site, which I am doing now.

Thank you again!
JJ