Migrating data back and forth between live and dev WordPress install

  • Hello!

    I am working on a pretty old and bloated WordPress installation which I would like to update and clean-up. The process would take considerable time, so the question arises, how can I keep in sync the dev install with the live site? I have migrated the live site to a different server, where I would do some changes, update plugins and installs, remove unused plugins, change the theme and maybe introduce some custom post types too. The issue is, during that time, the live site with no modifications is still online, and new posts, pages, and comments are added to the database every day. Ideally at the end of the development I would like to change the current live site to the modified one from the dev environment. How can I make sure that I don’t loose any new data? (meaning added to the live site after the migration to dev)? Is there some technique or best practices to it?

    Thank you very much!

    Cheers,
    Balint

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi Balint,

    i think one thing you can do is make sure your live site uses the latest WP version.All your data is stored there so when you are ready, you can export it and use it in your new site.

    Have you looked at VersionPress?

    https://versionpress.net/

    Thread Starter Balint Toth

    (@tothbalint)

    My biggest source of worrying is that the site uses an old theme and some abandoned plugins. Because of that, I would like to move the data from those plugins to some custom post types. The live site is 4.1.1, and the owner says he tried to do some kind of update, but had to roll back from backups because it broke the site. That is why I am hesitant to do any kind of WordPress update on the live site… It has high visitor count, and one of the important requests was that the downtime should be absolutely minimal.

    I was thinking of preparing the custom post types and after making some manual migration script to copy the data to the cpt tables, but I am not too knowledgeable in that field, are there any caveats to this? Should I avoid “manually” writing into the cpt tables, and use some kind of other method?

    In your position i would choose the safest way to update the site.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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