Change site

It sounds like you’re ending up with serialized data stored in some of the fields. Depending on how you’re updating the URLs, that may be causing the serialized data to become invalid and thus get dropped by PHP.

What method are you using to update those values? Some sort of MySQL find/replace? Export, open in text editor, find all, replace, save? Something else.

I first do an
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘https://www.oldurl’,’https://www.newurl’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘https://www.oldurl’, ‘https://www.newurl’);
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,’https://www.oldurl’,’https://www.newurl’);

Then I look for the old url in the database and replace it.

And then I use better search and replace plugin.

In the database then the old url localhost no longer appears anywhere.

But when I go to metabox then, I find the fields empty.

This is probably the part that’s throwing things off for you:

UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,'https://www.oldurl','https://www.newurl');

Because post meta can be serialized and likely is the case here.

Realistically, I would recommend making use of Better Search and Replace for all aspects of this domain change, as I know that plugin handles serialization for you, and shouldn’t cause the data loss.

OK, I will try.

At the next site I do I try and if there is still the problem I will write to you

Sounds good.

I confirm.
If the replacement I do only do the plugin better search and replace, the metaboxes remain compiled.

Thanks

Awesome, thanks for the followup confirmation.