Problems installing/migrating

This is a bit complicated to explain but I’ll try and be clear. Running the latest WP 3.9.1 on everything. Hosted at LunarPages and I’ve never had any MySQL/PHP/WP problems there for years.

I had the original (20110 version of my site at root level.

I’ve been working on a new completely overhauled site, which is in a subfolder (let’s call it site2014).

I used the plug-in Duplicator to make a complete backup of the 2011 root-level site, and I created a copy of the original site in another subfolder (let’s call it site2011). So at this point, I’ve got two versions of the original 2011 site running (with separate MySQL databases).

My goal was to move the new overhauled site (site2014) to root level).

So I put a simple index.html at root level, with redirect code to point to the site2011 folder. That way, I was free to delete the original site at root level, and during the migration, the public would still see the 2011 site (albeit at the site2011 URL but that’s fine for my purposes).

So far so good!

At this point I removed all the root level files belonging to the old original site.

I went to the site2014 backend, and used Duplicator to back the whole thing up and make me an installer.

I used that backup and installer, moved it to the root level, and installed it (again, all the site2014 database content was copied to a new MySQL database). It installed and didn’t report any errors, however, all I saw was a white screen. Long story short, I renamed the plug-in folder to “pluginsX” and suddenly the site kicked to life, and by process of elimination was able to find the plug-in that was causing it problems (Easy Digital Downloads 2.0.1), deleted it, reinstalled it, and now it seems happy.

However, there are a few differences between the new root-level site and site2014. Theme-specific things like sidebars not appearing, and so on. I can’t figure out why and I can’t seem to fix it.

But most mysteriously, if I go to site2014 (which I left there) it also has the white screen — even though I didn’t modify it at ALL. So I disabled all plug-ins, and it worked, so by process of elimination was able to figure out the plug-in that was causing it: Easy Digital Downloads 2.0.1. I deleted it and re-installed it, but without fail, it always causes the white screen (I have tested 5x).

So…after all that, my questions boil down to:

1) Any clues why EDD 2.0.1 would cause this, and why it’s now functioning at my root level site but not at my site2014 site? Any ideas how to “reset” it completely so that I can reinstall it on site2014? (site2014 is going to become my sandbox once all this is over)

2) Any ideas why this migration was sort of fine but not perfect? Did I do something wrong? Any better ways to do it?

I’ll redo the whole migration if it solves my problems (I still have the site2011 folder which I can redirect to if I need to delete everything and start over). This has been a maddening waste of hours so far!