Hey Matt,
Thanks for the detailed follow up! How does GD’s one click staging work? Have you used it before? Have you ever encountered issues with it before? Or is this your first time on GD’s hosting?
Ben
Hi Ben,
I’ve used their hosting before, and up to now was impressed with their new wordpress hosting, but I had not used their staging function before. I think the problem with these kinds of managed systems is that if something goes wrong, you can’t go in and fix it yourself. In the case of deploying the staging site, I was helpless in doing anything, and had to spend hours and days letting godaddy support each try their own way to fix.
" target="_blank">here’s screenshot
First you pull production to staging. This worked fine.
Next, I pushed staging to production. First time was without overwriting content (as per GD advice) since I had only changed some of the function and css files. When that gave me an error, GD told me to try to push with overwriting. More errors. Then they tried to manually override it… Site would not push correctly. Finally they got it to work, but I think something got messed up in the process.
then the latest problems with the live site…
so done with godaddy
Hey Matt,
That may have been the cause of the issue. I haven’t really tried using those one click staging/live features. I’ve tried doing the site locally, then transferring manually to the live site. And doing the site on a staging URL, then move it to the live site manually. And on all instances, I’ve used the Serialized Search and Replace script and it hasn’t failed me since.
So is everything fine now on your HG hosting?
Ben
Yes, I guess we can file this under godaddy issues. Definitley won’t be using that service anymore. I don’t like that I can’t control everything, especially database.
thank you and dan for all your help
-matt
No worries at all, Matt! And thanks for your patience as well as for your understanding. Enjoy BB! 
Ben