Does Anyone have a solution to stop widgets disappearing when you change URL

If I understand your issue correctly, I’ve had this problem as well. My current method is to use my hosts file on my computer. So, I can type in https://mysite.com and see the site online.

Causes a bit of a problem when I have to help a client view the site, but so far they are fine with me editing their host file. Typically they think it’s cool that although the site is “live” no one can see it.

I just ran across this though:
https://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-plugin-update-urls/

I’ve never used it, but it looks promising.

Wow that seems a lot more simpler, I will test it later today and let me you know how I get on.

Before I was using a file to find/replace URL’s in the database https://davidcoveney.com/782/mysql-database-search-replace-with-serialized-php/

then a serialization fixer to correct the options file
https://davidcoveney.com/575/php-serialization-fix-for-wordpress-migrations/

and finaly editing the maybe_unserialize function in the wp-includes/functions.php file to the below so the changes I make above stay

function maybe_unserialize( $original ) {
    if ( is_serialized( $original ) ) {
        $fixed = preg_replace_callback(
            '!(?<=^|;)s:(\d+)(?=:"(.*?)";(?:}|a:|s:|b:|i:|o:|N;))!s',
            'serialize_fix_callback',
            $original );
        return @unserialize( $fixed );
    }
    return $original;
}
function serialize_fix_callback($match) { return 's:' . strlen($match[2]); }

But of course this could be removed if i update wordpress