WordPress widget customization migration

Question

I did a lot of WordPress migrations from one server to another at work and in another place, but one strange thing that I could never understand is why widget settings never migrate.

I will delete the MySQL database, find / replace localhost with a live domain, an SSH database to the real server, and then ftp the whole WP installation (kernel and theme from my local machine), and still the widget settings are erased. And sometimes this also applies to the values ​​stored on the settings pages to those that I do in the My Account.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Wordpress stores widget parameters, and some plugins and themes also retain their parameters - like serialized data, so you need to be more careful than a full search / replace URLs.

A more detailed answer and some other ways to move databases and save serialized data: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/9076/why-is-my-database-import-losing-text-widget-data

Answer 2

To move the wordpress site and convert all serialized data, I used this script. use is very simple, load the script, change the credential variable to the database inside the php script and run it.

link to download the script: http://davidcoveney.com/575/php-serialization-fix-for-wordpress-migrations/

works fine.

Answer 3

Do not do it manually!

Do not edit the database manually when migrating between different domains!
Use small scripts such as Wordpress-Migrator.php (see also description).

because SERIALIZED arrays need to be modified specifically too !!!