[Plugin: WP Migrate DB] Not 100% multisite compatible

Out of curiosity, what settings weren’t brought over? I’m working on a multisite migration myself. If you end up doing a manual process I’d be interested in hearing what steps you took.

Thanks,

D.Lo

As far as I could see, settings concerning subsites were not carried over. There are a multitude of values in various tables in the database for that. I ended up using this howto https://www.realisingdesigns.com/2010/09/16/moving-the-domain-of-a-wordpress-multisite-install/

It’s worth mentioning that this procedure does not carry over menu’s, widget contents and custom/plugin values. I ended up correcting those by hand. All-in-all a pretty time-consuming process; next time I’ll probably build at a live site with jf3 Maintenance Redirect active, then unveil.

I found that same article and had good success with that. Like you said, widget contents can be problematic and I ended up having to correct some things by hand. But I have a feeling with a little more work I can create a DB script that will also take care of those options.

Thanks for the follow up and additional suggestions.

I should clarify my other point. I think the table I need to write a script for to clean up widget options automatically is wp_x_postmeta.

Would it be possible for you to contribute a patch to the module to share the ability to easily migrate multisites?

My need to do regular migrations greatly diminished so I opted for a more manual method. The value for my need wasn’t great enough to justify the work. Should that change I would just automate the steps below. I did however find a pretty expedient manual way that I will share that may help you.

Step 1 was to modify some general database data manually:
a. wp_site: domain, path
b. wp_sitemeta: siteurl
c. wp_blogs: domain, path for each record
i. You can write a simple query to do all the records in one shot
d. wp_options: ‘site_url’ and ‘home’ for each blog
i. Again, you can write a simple query to do all the records in one shot

Step 2 was to run two queries for each blog. It was simple as pasting both queries at the same time into a MyPHPAdmin query window, run them, increment the blog number by hand, repeat. Did about twenty blogs in 5 minutes. The queries were:
a. UPDATE wp_2_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid,”https://www.olddomain.edu/”,”https://www.newdomain.edu/”);
b. UPDATE wp_2_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (post_content,”https://www.olddomain.edu/”,”https://www.newdomain.edu/”);

Hrm. I’ve used this plugin to move a few (granted, smaller) multisites. I usually just remove the https://www. from the url change item and everything seems to work pretty smoothly. The only thing that doesn’t seem to transfer is, for some reason, text widgets.

I have not tried to do it with any kind of domain mapping applied, as I usually handle that after I “go live” with a site. I wonder if I’ve been missing something.

There was a bug in version 0.2.1 that was causing some data to be lost in certain migrations. Namely any widgets that contained a double quote character. This is fixed in today’s release of version 0.3:
https://plugins.trac.www.ads-software.com/changeset/476406

Hopefully there’s no issues with multisite going forward.

is this confirmed to be fixed?

Version 0.3 works with widgets that have data containing double quote characters.

I’ve been using WP-Migrate-DB to help bring blogs from stand-alone WP installations into multi-site, with all settings from widgets, plugins, themes, pages, posts. I edit the output from WP-Migrate-DB to remove those settings that you Dare Not Overwrite in a multi-site installation, and to change the table names.

Not for the faint-hearted, not for novices, and you can bring *Everything* over, all your SEO settings, all your widget customizations for each post, all your custom fields, everything, so your blog looks exactly the same.

I’ll be writing up more at Lerner Consulting or maybe it will be simpler for me to do the import for you? It’s a Lot to learn, but with WP Migrate DB it is possible.

Should this thread be marked as resolved?

HEre are a couple tools that could help

No cost
https://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/

Costs money..
https://pluginbuddy.com/backupbuddy-multisite-migration-expanded-features-in-beta-coming-soon/