Migrating to new server loses personalization

  • I’m a n00b, and I’m completely lost. I have been tasked with upgrading our wpmu (3.0.1) to the latest version of wp. Local convention dictates that I make a test instance of our set-up and test there.

    I have had the database copied, and the current wp files. I have edited the database and wp files to reflect the test address. Posts, pages, and everything all work as expected, except…

    It knows what theme a particular blog is, but for some odd reason the details are bunged up. A 3 column theme defaults to the 2 column version. The widgets are all lost. The header image no longer shows even though the database entry is correct and I can see it via a browser. Menus are lost.

    I even tried importing a blog and that didn’t work either. As I said, all of the main blog functionality is there, just the personalization seems lost.

    This wouldn’t be a huge problem for me except that we have hundreds of blogs and many of them will be upset that their personalization is lost. Also, in the near future, I will have to migrate everything off to a new, more robust, server and this is a good time to test out the steps I will need to follow for the production version.

    Does anyone have any clues as to what I should look for or do to make this work? If the data is in the database, why wouldn’t an exact copy find/display it?

    Signed, Confused.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter jduche

    (@jduche)

    Yeah, silence is what I sort of expected. Searches for this issue on the web say stuff like “just redo your menus and display options.” Which would be fine for a single blog instance of WP, which I’m not.

    As an associated clue, an import tells me “Menu item skipped due to missing menu slug” for menus. Seems to be only for sub-levels in the menu. I wonder why slugs are missing?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    Dude. Be calm ?? This is a 100% volunteer forum and Multisite has fewer regulars than other sections (and lives and jobs). If you can’t be patient a bit, you’re in for a world o’ pain. ?? (I’m sure you don’t wanna know what yesterday was like, so we’ll leave it at that.)

    What you’re describing sounds like your database didn’t copy over everything, OR when you changed the domain name in the database, you changed it to something that managed to munge the settings.

    Menus (i.e. appearance -> Menus) are saved in the posts table and called by, IIRC, the options table.

    Is this happening for ALL blogs on the network or just a few?

    What did you change the domain name from and to?

    Thread Starter jduche

    (@jduche)

    Hah! My utmost apologies. I merely thought that due to my INCREDIBLE inexperience, that I was unable to craft a message that others would understand. Mostly because I’m not sure I know whats going on!

    The posts (wp_*_posts) tables in both databases look identical. I have a php script that does the search/replace for the domain string in all tables and I check when it is done to make sure it worked.

    I think I will start over from scratch again and update here. Hopefully, I will gain enough experience so that I, too, will be able to assist others. But thank you for your help.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    Nah, just one of those weeks from hell (WordCamp San Francisco is going on and either you’re there, or you’re overwhelmed with work and can’t go).

    I have a php script that does the search/replace for the domain string in all tables and I check when it is done to make sure it worked.

    What was the before and after pattern though?

    Sometimes changing the number of characters in the domain has weird consequences. I usually go from domain.loc (on my local box) to domain.com to keep them as close as humanly possible.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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