We’re struggling to migrate a site from localhost:8888 to our webserver. It’s using both Beaver Builder Theme + Beaver Builder plugin.
We tried the migrate twice. First, we moved everything over from localhost to the server and tried to run the DB search and replace from there. Neither the theme customizations or the pagebuilder pages are loading as they were. It’s worth noting that the page customizations are there when we going into the Page Builder editor…but when we “publish”, we’re still presented with a blank screen.
Next, we ran the DB search and replace on the local server BEFORE packaging it up for migrate.
In both instances we cleared the cache/cookies multiple times in our browser…cleared the Beaver Builder cache & logged in/logged out of the session.
We are not using a child theme, though we know we should be (we installed but must have forgotten to activate).
We used the pre-defined templates to serve as the foundation as most of our pages. We tried saving these as templates themselves, but those templates seem “empty” on the new install.
The new site uses SSL
Are we missing something with the templating system or theme customizer?
We have been raving all week about how great this plugin is to the higher-ups: please help us figure out how to do this smoothly. The instructions you provided, when followed to a T, seem to not apply to all implementations.
PM me or send me an email at [email protected] for a link to the site (it’s htaccess password protected) and admin login. We consider this relatively urgent as we’ve build several sites locally and now are stuck.
Hi Jim. Sorry you’re having trouble. You mentioned that the new site is running on SSL, did you replace “http” in the url with “https”?
For the link/login, you can create a private reply here in the forum. I’d definitely like to take a look if possible.
Did you backup the local database before you ran a search/replace on it? Just curious if we have a fresh, local database to roll back to if needed. Thanks, Jim!
Excellent! Glad to hear you have a backup. That makes troubleshooting these issues much less stressful. You can always get back where you started.
Anyways… It looks like the live site is still configured to use http, not https. That could be contributing to the problem.
If possible, I would recommend redoing the database migration. If you can, use the untouched, local database. Then, when you run the search/replace script, try using the following:
Sounds good. Before I go through the migration process again, I just want to be sure about running the DB Search+Replace in the right sequence. Is this to be done from my local folder (before uploading to server) or from the remote server (after uploading to server)?
Sorry, “untouched” might be a designation that has such considerations included. Just want to make sure.
I’ll get started as soon as you confirm this part.
I like to run the search and replace on the live/remote server. I’ll export the database from my local copy, then import it on the server, then run the find/replace on the server. That way your local database doesn’t change.
Jim, thanks for doing that. Did you by chance get a screenshot of the search/replace settings?
The “skeleton” you’re seeing is caused by the serialized data being corrupted somehow. It shouldn’t have anything to do with the pre-built templates.
Is there any chance you could zip up the wp-content folder and send me that along with the local (clean) database? I would love to try doing the migration on my end to see if I can find any clues. You can use DropBox to share the files if they’re too large. Here’s my email:
robby [at] fastlinemedia [dot] com
I am just about to leave for the day, but I will follow up with you first thing tomorrow. We’ll get it figured out ASAP
Sorry to make you guys redo the database import. I tried migrating the site to a local server, and everything went smoothly. There must be something happening with the database search/replace.
Just to confirm, are you guys using the 3.1.0 version of the find/replace script from this site:
We used duplicator to export the local site. Our designer is a bit new to Wordpress and it’s a bit easier going through that process than having him manually export the DB.
I’d just like to chime in here. So are you saying that the DB you ran the script on was exported from your localhost using the Duplicator? I’m not exactly sure if the Duplicator plugin handles serialized data. Do you think you can export the clean DB from the localhost manually using PHPmyadmin? And import that to the live site then run the script?
That sounds like worth trying. We’ll take a stab at it. After going through this process without knowledge of whether the Duplicator does handle serialized data, I’m hopeful that some magic is about to happen.
It’s still a no-go. We are absolutely dumbfounded.
I did notice the database contained an entry at some point in the first row of wp_options that contained a namespace including _transient_cron, which I was thinking could have corrupted the data. Then again, that could have been the search and replace tool doing it’s thing.
I tried to grab a screenshot but unthinkingly deleted it since it didn’t look right and haven’t been able to reproduce.
I’m going to try this on the baremetal server I have at home and make sure it’s not some sort of hiccup with my host’s cloud config. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to install from scratch and make sure it’s not some sort of ghost in that local copy of Wordpress.
I’ll be around during the weekend. If you have time, could you resend the clean localhost database to themes [at] fastlinemedia [dot] com so I could have a look at it as well?
Sure thing. We’re going to do a clean export again without the Duplicator plugin…I’m also going to see if I can successfully migrate a different BB site since this is the only one we’ve tried.
