Please help. All of my Content (and the X Theme "edit page") is gone

Support
#2

Hello @mpalinkas,

Thanks for writing in! Are you trying to migrate the site to another WP installation? It is best that you review this article on how you migrate a site: https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/cornerstone-content-builder-migration/126/1

If you have only change the location of the files, you will have to update the urls in Settings > General > Site URL and then install Better Search and Replace. You will have to search for the old location url and replace it with the new location url.

Hope this helps. Please let us know how it goes.

#3

Thank you so much for getting back to me. I left the old files in the old directory so I figured it wouldn’t be affected, but now for some reason, it appears that cornerstone isn’t reading some of the information on some of the pages.

#4

Some of the pages seem to be fine, but others are completely broken. The global blocks aren’t showing up either.

#5

Hi,

May I know how did you move your site. Try doing it again from scratch using this third party plugin.

Thanks

#6

I just tried by duplicating the files into the root folder and then changing the wp-config file.
The staging site is the one that is broken now and I’m trying to figure out why.

#7

Hey @mpalinkas ,
​
​To assist you better with this issue, would you mind providing us the url of your site with login credentials so we can take a closer look? This is to ensure that we can provide you with a tailored answer to your situation.

To do this, you can create a secure note with the following info:
– Link to your site
– WordPress Admin username / password

To know how to create a secure note, please check this out: https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/how-to-get-support/288
​
Thank you.

#8

I posted it above because I am not seeing the secure note on the “reply”

#9

Hi,

I am sorry but the way you copied your site will not work.

Wordpress stores many data as serialized array.

Here’s a simplified example of how some data is stored in a WordPress database:

s:5:"title";s:22:"The title of my widget";s:4:"text";s:101:"Text goes here <a href='http://localhost/wordpress/'>This is a link which URL is going to be replaced";

Notice how the number after the s: corresponds with the number of characters in the string that follows (i.e. s:5:”title” … “title” is 5 characters long).

So when you change the url and the new URL has a different amount of characters than the one before, this will invalidate the serialized array.

Basically, you lose all data that are stored in that array, including individual data that didn’t have a URL (or any text for that matter) replaced with a new one with a different amount of characters.

To fix this, you can try installing this third party plugin.

Then do a search and replace

Search for: http://your-old-url.com

Replace with: http://your-new-url.com

Hope that helps.

#10

I just want the staging site to work again. That’s it… Then I can use the “correct method”. The url hasn’t changed in the old site. It’s the same. I’m unsure as to why creating a copy of the files corrupted the staging site. I appreciate your help, but I simply want the staging site to work again. I will try and restore the database, but from what I’ve seen in all of these threads, I will probably have to recreate many many pages.

#11

Hi

Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to your staging site.

You don’t have to redo all your pages. Your staging site is not working because probably there are still data that points to your live site. To fix it, you can try installing better search and replace plugin in your staging site then do a search and replace.

Search for: http://mccurdy.org

Replace with: http://staging.mccurdy.org

Thanks

#12

Thank you… I did that, but still to no avail.

I’m going to install an old backup today and hopefully it will be pretty close.

#13

Hi there,

Yes, please do that first and check it again.

Thanks!

#14

Yes, if you want to do it manually instead of using a tool, Like Migrate DB Pro, although, really good, they are only free up to a point.
Export your database.
Go to the new environment on staging, add the new database. Then import the the backed up data base. I use mySQL and phpMyAdmin
You should see broken content and links, that’s fine.
Go Here

Then change the names of the environments ‘from’ and ‘to’ and run the changes.
You should be good, but you may have to go into your WP Admin and update the ‘permalinks settings’ and save them again. Just so that the DB is awake. Not sure why one has to do this step, but seems like it helps with home links and such.

#15

Thanks a lot for sharing the knowledge with our community member, Richard. :slight_smile:

#16

Thank you so very much! I basically rebuilt all of the content in there and now I am scared to death to move the site at all. I am having the hosting company do it. I backed up the database, so hopefully that will give me a bit of security!

#17

Let us know how it goes.

#18

Thanks Prasant. I will be doing this tonight and am keeping my fingers Xed.

What I would like to do is this:

  1. Migrate the site via Migrate DB (if you suggest that) to the root directory (I would prefer to clone it, if that is possible (any suggestions).
  2. Throw the index.html file that is the homepage from the root directory in a sub folder (so that it no longer reads)
  3. Test out the new instance of the site in the root directory
  4. Pray
  5. Have a shot of Whiskey if it works

Any tips on what I can tell the hosting company in regards to doing this?
I know that I need to migrate both the WP content as well as the database. Do you happen to have some links that I can point them to to make this happen (I’m hoping that they know what they are doing).

Please let me know.
Best,
Mindy

#19

Hello Mindy,

Perhaps this knowledge base article could help you.

There are some links in the article that you can refer them to.

#20

Thank you! I will do that… counting down to 3 hours from now. :wink:

#21

No problem.
If you need anything else we can help you with, don’t hesitate to open another thread.