Wordpress Migration: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Over the last 24 hours I’ve migrated all my domain names and the Project Cake Wordpress blog to a new server based in Australia. On a scale of 1 to 10 for my technical skills and knowledge I’d probably but myself around a 7 – I’m not too bad and do have experience, but sometimes things will crop up and just completely stump me.
Here is a quick breakdown of the experience I had…
The Good
- Export function was flawless and practically instant
- As usual the Wordpress setup worked a treat
- Import function was exactly the same
- All previous comments were successfully transferred
The Bad
- All the widgets turned themselves off and did not “remember” their previous settings
- I had to re-import all my old wp-content files and folders from the last backup as some of the files seemed to be corrupt (this was a weird one)
- It took me ages to work out why I couldn’t connect to my database (turned out this one was down to the MySQL DB hostname)
- All theme info (even when I had re-imported all previous data) was messed up and I had to reset all the settings (another strange one)
The Ugly
- All “permalink” info was not migrated and hence any previous links that I advertised anywhere will now be null and void
- The “About the Auther” info randomly disappeared and I can’t remember what witty and interesting comment I put ;o)
Conclusion
There may be valid reasons why some of these things happened, and I didn’t really investigate them too much due to wanting to spend the time as productively as possible trying to get the site back up and running, but you need to be aware of these potential problems prior to starting a migration process…
- Common sense but always make a backup prior to serious work like this
- Maybe take a few screenshots as well just in case the layout / copy is changed for whatever reason
- Wordpress has some solid instructions – follow them!
- It may take you a bit of time and be frustrating but it pays to go slow, concentrate and focus on the task at hand
Thanks,
Tony
