[Plugin: Black Studio TinyMCE Widget] Widgets Dissappear Upon Domain Change

I’m not sure, but it could be that the standard process doesn’t take into account the problem of serialised arrays, which cause a problem when it comes to widgets. Are other widgets working, or do you only have the TinyMCE one installed?

I often use this small search+replace file and instructions when migrating sites (from dev to live) and it’s always been very helpful.

Hello erinobrien, thanks for your report, I will make some tests in order to try to reproduce this issue.
Please could you tell me if inside your widgets there were images and/or links?

As karl19 said, I also believe that this issue may be related to the famous serialized fields issue. When changing the site URL, I would recommend using that search and replace tool or the WordPress move plugin, which also handles serialized fields substitution.

I am having a issue when I update the plugin. If the update doesn’t go according to plan.

For example I got this error last time I tried to update the plugin.
Plugin Update Fail Screenshot

It tells me I can not remove the plugin and then the plugin folder remains but the files are completely delete, which intern deletes the plugin.

What about using the inactive widgets area when updating the plugin. That could make things a bit easier don’t you think?

ps. Is the text for the widget kept in the database somewhere then the widget is removed or is it deleted upon removal.

Hello RDall,
the problem you reported is a bit strange and it doesn’t seem to be strictly related with our plugin. Did you exeperience similar issues with other plugin updates? Could you check the permissions of plugins and black-studio-tinymce-widget folders?
The text of the widgets is saved into the database and it is kept upon plugin removal, so you can safely manually delete the plugin and reinstall it. If you don’t succeed in doing it through the WP plugins interface, I would recommend to try a manual install by deleting and re-uploading the new version through FTP.

Just wanted to say I had the same issue of the Black Studio Widget disappearing after a site move with URL change – from development to staging. To fix, I found the entry in the [table-prefix]_options table where option_name = ‘widget_black-studio-tinymce’. I had one image embedded in my tinymce copy. I found the s:number right before the quoted string that contained the url and changed that number by the difference between my old and new URLs. Everything worked after this change. If you know your way around a database, this might be easier than figuring out a plugin.

Hi bridgetwes,
thanks for sharing your experience. As I previously said when dealing with a WordPress URL change it is necessary to face the “serialized fields” issue, which may become corrupted if using a simple search/replace (see the Codex for further info).
This is not an issue specifically related to our plugin, but it affects all the pieces of code (plugins, themes and WP core too) that use serialized data.
When changing the site’s URL, I recommend using the Search and Replace for WordPress Databases Script, as suggested by the Codex.