Converting multiple blogs using same database to single multisite

How comfortable are you with working in the database directly?

Hi Andrea,

Sorry for delay in responding, I’m in Sydney, Australia.

I’d describe my ability to do that as basic, essentially limited to working via php admin at the “follow instructions” level. I am not a programmer and have only a rudimentary knowledge of coding. Sorry!

Tony

PS Of course, I could maybe pay someone more capable to do it, if this was a basically straightforward operation…

Well nobody’s written a step by step for this particular situation, but if they are all in the same db, it involves renaming tables and shuffling some things around.

I’d say intermediate level.

Copy that. When it comes to ground-breaking, I wouldn’t feel happy unless I was at least one skill level above that notionally required, which rules this process out for me, I think.

So if I want to do it myself, I’d have to basically start from scratch, export all the blogs, install and specify one blog as lead, and then re-import the rest from the back-ups into the network? Presumably, it’s preferable to start with a clean database, so at least I can keep everything running until the last moment.

Has anyone else done this and can give me any heads-ups as to possible snafus?

Tony

Yep. That’s the slow-but-works way.

possible snafus only really relate to media uploads.
https://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-multisite-attachment-handling/

Thanks, Andrea, that’s very helpful. So the images embedded in a post would be OK, but any attachments would need to have their links amended?

If they are embedded in a post, where are they linked to? your install? If offsite, no. If on your install…. then…. yes…

I’ve often set up two images folders, one for legacy links and then copies in the new one.

but any attachments would need to have their links amended?

any attachments may need to have their links amended.

Good grief, we have a minimum of one image on each post, uploaded to the media library, and a thousand or more posts. I’d assumed (stupidly) that in some mystic way the image links were rewritten – pretty dumb, now I come to think of it.

So the easiest way to solve this is to maintain my current uploads directory structure for legacy posts. Not elegant, but workable?

I may be slow, but why do you place copies in the new https://example.com/files/2010/ folder?

I may be slow, but why do you place copies in the new https://example.com/files/2010/ folder?

Redundacy in case I missed something. And so they show in the Media area.

Got it. Thanks for your help on this. I think I’ll take the more conservative approach and see how I go. If I split the approx. 40 blogs into 5 separate multisite installations, that should free up a lot of maintenance time while avoiding putting all my eggs in one basket (too chicken for that!).