I’m moving a site from my development server to the production installation. Usually, I move all the files and transfer the database, then use the serialized search/replace tool from https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/ to update URLs in the database.
This method caused me to lose PageBuilder content, as has been discussed elsewhere on this site.
I tried the “Duplicator” plugin as suggested, with the same results.
I had some more success with using WordPress’s Import/Export function, but even then, images in the SO image widget needed to be replaced. Moreover, while exporting content this way works, it necessitates exporting a lot of other content separately and is far more laborious.
Do you know of any possible reasons why the Duplicator plugin would fail, and are there any specific tricks I should try?
Hi Alden
Thanks for posting your question. Sorry to hear about the problem you’ve encountered. We haven’t encountered a case in the past where Duplicator has failed to move Page Builder content. I’m unsure why that might have happened in your case.
When you moved your database manually, did the issue occur before or after doing a search and replace?
Losing Page Builder content when doing a manual DB move can be the result of formatting not being set to UTF8 on export and import. Could that have been the case?
WordPress Import/Export should work perfectly. It’s expected that image URL’s would be incorrect if the site URL changes. As you mentioned, it’s a heavily laborious method.
Did you do the Duplicator move and then use search and replace?
The problem happened before I did the search and replace. Once loaded onto the destination server, the PageBuilder content is gone—even before I search and replace anything.
Further testing reveals that all works fine when loaded onto my local development computer. The MySQL versions are different:
Local: MySQL 5.5.38—works
Server: MySQL: 5.5.42—breaks
Would that be any explanation for what is happening? Does something about the database get lost in translation? Seems unlikely to me, but I'm operating beyond my expertise at this point.
Thank you for your help!
Thanks for your feedback. I’ll escalate your question regarding the different MySQL versions. Can you confirm the export and import format was set to UTF8?