API activation details and theme settings are the easy ones. The API activation details should be contained in a .papi file that you create and test locally with the Apple News API CLI (https://github.com/alleyinteractive/apple-news/wiki/configuration#api-settings) and you can import the same file to both environments. If you’re not on a Mac and can’t use the Apple News API CLI, or would rather do this manually, you can paste the contents of that file into a textarea on the settings screen which is visible by clicking a link in the field description text. If you save the contents of that file, you can paste the same settings in both places. Please remember that once you move to production, you should disconnect your staging site from Apple News so that you don’t accidentally publish staging content to your channel.
Likewise, themes can be exported and imported. In the Apple News > Themes screen you can export any of your themes from staging and then go to the same screen on production and import them. Exporting the themes generates a JSON file which is what you will import to production.
The harder settings to migrate are the plugin settings that aren’t included in the theme or the API settings. However, unless your setup is very complex, it’s likely pretty quick to copy those settings by hand. It’s possible to use a database tool to extract these settings (look in the wp_options table, or whatever it is called on your setup, and search for settings that start with “apple_news_”). A possible challenge with copying the data from one database to another is that if any of the database IDs are different between environments (e.g., term IDs) you would need to update those in the database script when moving between environments. That’s why I’d recommend copying those settings manually if you can.
You’re right that older versions of the plugin didn’t use the .papi file for API settings. Under the hood, the channel ID, key, and secret are still stored in the same options fields, but the way the settings are imported has changed. If you already had your channel configured using the old method, it will continue to work, but for setting up a new environment you will either need a .papi file or a text file with the same contents as a .papi file which you can either upload or copy and paste the contents from into the manual entry textarea.
I hope this helps!
