Pages never Export/Import Correctly

Beaver Builder
1

Hi,

I have a few websites and I often try to duplicate websites and content by using the export feature, and whenever I export and import content it NEVER works correctly. The pages just come up blank with nothing on them, then when I edit them in beaver builder they get way messed up. I need help.

Chris

2

Hey Chris,

Thanks for posting! That shouldn’t be the case. Do you think you can share one website where the exported template doesn’t work?

Ben

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4

Hey Chris,

Would it be fine to ask for temp admin access to the multisite install? I wanted to check the contents of the template you’re exporting as well as test it.

Ben

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6

Hey Chris,

Quick question here. While you are moving these sites, are you making sure to do a serialized search and replace on the database to replace all URLs with the correct new URL? That would certainly cause issues if not. We have more info on what we use here, but the Better Search and Replace plugin also works after the migration. Let us know on that if you don’t mind.

Best,
Billy

7

Yes I have done that, it still shows up blank though.

8

Hey Chris,

I just tried this on a dev multisite site that we have and the pages export/import just fine. Do you think you could try disabling all other plugins then do the export and see if that makes a difference? I’m getting the same thing as you, nothing on the frontend and a messed up layout on the page builder.

Ben

9

I disabled all plugins and still had the same issue…is there any way for you to look at the file that is being exported, or find an error log to try and troubleshoot the issue? I am unable to export page templates and pages and have a client that is waiting on me to launch the website. It definitely seems to be a beaver builder plugin issue.

10

Hey Christopher! Sorry for the trouble. We’re all looking into this for you. Since this is time sensitive, I wanted to see if migrating the whole WordPress install is an option? Is there a reason you’re only exporting pages/templates versus the whole site? We’ll do our best to get this resolved ASAP…

11

We are separating the website from a multisite network so that is why we can’t migrate the whole install. If there are any other options, I am open to suggestions. Thanks!

12

Hi Christopher,

I did some testing and it looks like there are a few things going on here that are a bit out of our control.

First, it looks like the WPSmush plugin is somehow adding this HTML to the builder’s data…

<input type="hidden" name="attachments[183][menu_order]" value="0" /><table class="compat-attachment-fields">		<tr class='compat-field-wp_smush'>			<th scope='row' class='label'><label for='attachments-183-wp_smush'><span class='alignleft'>WP Smush</span><br class='clear' /></label></th>
			<td class='field'><div class="smush-wrap smushed">
			<p class="smush-status">Reduced by 35.96 KB (  39.9% )</p></div></td>
		</tr>
</table>

I don’t believe that HTML is breaking the builder’s data as the pages on the source site would be broken. However, I do believe that somewhere in the export/import process, it is causing the builder’s serialized data to break.

My best guess is the fact that WordPress is calling utf8_encode on the data when it’s being exported in the wxr_cdata function in wp-admin/includes/export.php, but I can’t be 100% sure.

At this point, we’re kind of stuck. It appears that there is an issue with core WordPress or the importer breaking serialized data that contains HTML but all of my attempts at a patch have been fruitless. We’re storing data “the WordPress way” using update_post_meta, so I don’t believe the issue is on our end.

I’m not opposed to continuing to look into a patch for this (I’ve provided an importer patch before) but it’s not something that is going to be easily or quickly done.

In the meantime, have you looked at any articles regarding migrating a site away from a multisite install? I’ve done that before and it’s doable. Here are two great articles on doing that. We’ve never seen an SQL export/import break serialized data, so you should be good with this route…

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-move-a-site-from-wordpress-multisite-to-single-install/
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/moving-wordpress-moving-a-site-out-of-a-multisite-network--cms-22772

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Justin

13

Christopher, I wanted to chime in again real quickly here too. We’re going to keep looking into this issue and see about finding a fix or a workaround. Sorry for the trouble.

14

Hey Christopher,

I did some more testing and it looks like the issue could be with WP’s export corrupting Beaver Builder’s serialized arrays. Would it be possible to get temporary FTP access to test that theory? I can’t test it on my end since I don’t have any pages that are exporting with this problem.

Thanks!
Justin

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Thanks, Christopher! It turns out that the issue isn’t with the exporter, but with the importer. I’m still not sure why, but WordPress’ default parsers are breaking the serialized data.

I’ve included a link below to a patched version that only uses the WXR_Parser_Regex parser along with my original patch which allowed me to import your templates without any issues. Give that a shot and let me know how it goes. Fingers crossed that it works for you as well!

http://forum.wpbeaverbuilder.com/downloads/wordpress-importer-patched.zip

Thanks,
Justin

17

Hey Christopher,

Just checking in to see if you had a chance to try out the patched importer. Let me know how that goes!

Thanks,
Justin

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I was having this exact issue just now and came to the forums for an answer. That patch worked perfectly, Thank you!