However today we ran into a problem that the search/replace function did not find all of the page builder postmeta data after a launch, and so many of the page links (and image references) throughout the site are still pointing to the dev site.
Have you tried clearing the BB cache after migration? We’ve steps documented regarding Migrating a Site To Another Domain on our Knowledge Base. If you already did that and you’re still having the same problem, would it be possible for you to upload the old DB(one with the devsite) and upload the search and replace script? I’d like to try first hand using that script and see if we get the same problem?
I was wondering if we could put it back to the austincollege site but I think that site is already live so we can just forget that. When you did the serialized search and replace, did you include the www. on both search and replace fields (e.g. www.testdomain.com on search field and www.livedomain.com on the replace field)? I downloaded the postmeta table from your DB and indeed I can see a lot of the elements still from the dev site.
Ben - we are in process of cloning the dev site for your troubleshooting. As soon as that is ready, I’ll let you know.
Yes, we tested search/replace in many different combinations, including just searching for “acwebtest” (the dev site subdomain), which showed zero results in postmeta table (after the initial search/replace).
I ran the script on the clone site (I only ran on posts, postmeta and options table) - search/replace ‘acwebtest.austincollege.edu’ (original dev site) with ‘acwebtest2.austincollege.edu’ (our testing domain).
All references found were replaced, this time verified 100% replaced in phpMyAdmin.
I then cleared the Page Builder cache, and also made sure the site cache was turned off.
Now the Home page (and other Page Builder pages) appear to be empty (just a header and blank footer). When you click on Page Builder at the top, you can see the content, but it’s all together in one text editor box.
We noticed this issue before when we tried to search/replace directly in the DB (non-serialized).
I ran the search/replace again on those three tables, and returned every reference of acwebtest2 back to acwebtest. How the Home page appears again, with mixed references to both strings in source code (as expected).
I tried again - search/replace just on posts and postmeta table - replaced acwebtest with acwebtest2. CLeared Builder cache again, and Home page is blank, except for header/footer. I suspect returning the references back to dev domain will again restore the page content.
To reiterate - this is the condition of the live site – multiple references to dev domain, in image references and links (in Page Builder content). All working since we still have dev domain public, so live site ‘appears’ to be working to the general public.
SO - search/replace on posts/postmeta seems to break the Builder content.
Search/replace on options also breaks the footer content.
What other tables should we be performing search/replace on?
Clearly not all tables, as this will break other functions and plugins.
I also noted that in the options table, there is an opion_name “_fl_builder_home_url” - when I manually set that to ‘acwebtest2’, it doesn’t seem to have any effect at this point.
Please escalate this troubleshooting if you can. Thank you!
I would run the search and replace script on all the tables, unless you want to leave some images/functions behind the dev site(which is unlikely the case). Regarding not running it on all tables as it will break other functions/plugins, what functions/plugins exactly break after running it on all tables? I don’t think it will since we have already transferred the files to the live site, all references to the dev site should be changed to the live site. I would suggest taking a backup of the database, run the search and replace script on all tables - that’s how I’ve been doing it since I’ve used this script and nothing has broke ever since
Thank you. I ran the search/replace on all tables:
replaced ‘www’ with ‘acwebtest2’
replaced ‘acwebtest’ with ‘acwebtest2’
cleared the Builder cache
Now the Home page (and every Page Builder page) is virtually empty, except for some Header content (some widgets not loading).
Did you make a backup copy of your database before running those? The idea regarding the serialized search and replace is to replace all dev sites with the live site. What it does is it literally searches the text on the search box, then replaces it with the text on the replace box. Searching for ‘www’ and replacing it with ‘acwebtest2’ means that all instances of ‘www’ on the database has been replaced with ‘acwebtest2’ which would include the ‘www’ in www.acwebtest2.austincollege.edu making it acwebtest2.acwebtest2.austincollege.edu which is not good. For this case, the dev site was acwebtest.austincollege.edu and we wanted to transfer it to the clone site acwebtest2.austincollege.edu so what we’re gonna search for is all reference to the dev site which is acwebtest.austincollege.edu and we’re gonna replace that with the new site which is acwebtest2.austincollege.edu. You can import the database backup to the clone site and try that. It should work without any problems.
Sorry, I should have been more clear.
– replaced ‘www.austincollege.edu’ with ‘acwebtest2.austincollege.edu′
– replaced ‘acwebtest.austincollege.edu’ with ‘acwebtest2.austincollege.edu′
I will have them restore the DB and we will run another test…
