[PelanPelanParticipant]

In advance, I’d like to apologize for the lengthy post but my conditions are very unique and complex. I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything out. I hope you understand

I know this has been addressed before but neither of the two threads helped fix my problem. One of them was resolved by your assistance on the back end but it wasn’t explained how and unfortunately I can not give access to the back end because it is a localhost server. I am desperate to resolve the issue. I have been working on this issue for two weeks and still have not fixed the problem. Asking for assistance is always my last resort.

A note to others who may read this. In my opinion it is better to have single site WP installations for development than to use a multisite localhost development environment, especially if the projects are NOT related.

The full error:Error: Wrong export slider file format! This could be caused because the ZipArchive extension is not enabled.

Note: This error occurs on both of installations.

I began working on an insurance agen’ts site on my other computer’s localhost. After many frustrated hours of designing and developing on the Windows platform, I finally decided to purchase an imac. Migrating the site from one localhost to another has been a nightmare and because I was working with a Network WordPress MultiSite, it has extremely compounded the issues of the migration process. I had to extract the site from the network to a single site installation and this excludes any “all in one migration plugins” from being a viable option.

I am almost entirely migrated the site, which had to be done manually. I even cleaned up the database of almost all tables and entries referring to the multisite. I have successfully edited the linking paths to reference the images. Although, I do not have images correctly referenced to the media library yet. i.e, the images show up correctly on the frontend now but the media library within the WordPress is empty.

Right now, the only thing left to do is correctly export/import my custom Revolutionary slide on the landing page from/to the new installation but I continue to get the, “export slider file format” error.”

I have read a lot about the ZipArchive extension and it is my understanding that it should be enable by default in MAMP. I also can’t imagine that in both environments that the Ziparchive is not enabled for a localhost server. The process to install the extension and enable it is an advanced procedure, and even more so on the Mac. It doesn’t make sense that it wouldn’t be setup by default because the average user with a local development install doesn’t have knowledge of the command line installation process and I have very little experience. Just to export/import a slider, shouldn’t be this challenging and I will not be able to get support from themepunch because it’s packaged with the theme.

I did change a few settings in both the php.ini and the apache.ini that I’m pretty sure would enable the archiving but the error still appears. I even get the error when I try to import the text file and then manually put the rest of the files in their correct directories.

I’m not sure if this makes a difference but I am able import zip files from WP without a problem, like plugins and themes. I also was able export WP settings and import them. The files associated with the exported wp installation failed but the pages imported without a problem and it also correctly implemented the import process and unpacked the .zip.

Is the import process not available to anyone who has the plugin in a theme package? Is there something within X I am forgetting? If not, is there a way to manually import my Revolutionary Slide without using the txt file, even if it means manually editing the sql tables with correct Revolutionary data to reference the slide?

I would have already just recreated the slide but when I migrate the site again to a live server I am going to face this same issue. By then, redesigning slides would be a huge undertaking.

Here are details on each environment:

OLD PLATFORM
OS: Windows 7 (SP and updates are current)
Local Server: Xampp:V3.2.1
PHP v5.6.11
localhost Multisite WordPress (most current version), (Subsites Mapped into separate folders), (The insurance site setup as default i.e., ID=1 i.e., …/wordpress)

NEW PLATFORM
OS: iMac EL Capitan (V10.11.2)
Localhost Server: MAMP V3.5
PHP v7
localhost Single Site install (wordpress almost entirely migrated)

Thanks for any assistance you can give me
LB

[DarshanaModerator]

Hi there,

Thanks for writing in!

It’s hard to diagnose your issue without checking your actual setup. You may check the following links on how to share your locally hosted sites (localhost).
https://forwardhq.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/accessing-localhost-from-anywhere/

Let us know.
Thanks!

[PelanPelanParticipant]

I spent the entire day trying get this set up on ngrok and I was not able to do it. This has been a very frustrating issue that has brought all of my production to a screeching hault. I was able to configure ngrok to open up the tunnel but it does not see the wordpress site url at all. Once set the ngrok to open the tunnel and I go to my localhost url all I get is a black page with the words, “It Works!” It doesn’t recognize the WP header.

I read that in order to load WordPress I needed a plugin to make the links relative. I did that, and if I use the ngrok tunnel link, with a /and the folder the site resides in, I get a 404 error. It doesn’t allow me to look at admin using the link either.

I even tried setting up a virtual host too. I believe I have everything set correctly but there is very little information on a setup for wordpress other than installing the plugin.

If you can walk me through it step by step I’ll follow it because setting up a tunnel would be very useful in the future anyway. If you can’t, I’d like t if it is possible to still manually import my slider and edit the sql database to see it.

If you want to see the steps I’ve taken let me know and I’ll send a private message because I’m not sure how sensitive the information is in the httpd # Virtual Hosts config file.

I do hope you can help

LB

[RadModerator]

Hi there,

The faster and safest would be setting up a live staging site. Even if you successfully set up that, there are a chance that it may still have issues that will prevent us checking it.

Port forwarding and Dynamic DNS would work too, but that’s a lot just to setup it. The process may also break your current site if you’re going to work on it (Different URL that localhost).

Thanks.

[PelanPelanParticipant]

A lot of what we are discussing are just to set up a scenario for your team to have access to look at things on the backend.

There hasn’t been much discussion on possible reasons for the error or a short term fix and an alternative import procedure for my slide template I need imported.

Is it possible to manually import the slider and bypass the Themepunch import process? For example, place images and css into the proper folders and then find the rev_slider entries section within the sql database and edit the paths to correctly point all references to the template as if I had automatically imported it.

If you don’t mind, me asking, how did you correctly get the slider to work in the other thread? It was never explained. The team went into the backend and resolved it. I’d like to give that a try.

Also unlike a local server, you still wouldn’t have access the root WP folder or even the database as you would if the site were live and you had cpanel and FTP privileges. I don’t believe I could give tunnel access to my files. Can I? If you need backend access to the root there is a rudimentary approach. I could send you the entire folder including the sql via dropbox or some other cloud service if you like. You just wouldn’t have a way to see the site live unless you set it up locally.

In the meantime while we continue troubleshooting I’m going to try:

One of the other services to see if I have better luck.

I will also try exporting a slide from one of my live sites and importing it to see if the error still occurs.

Regards
LB

[PelanPelanParticipant]

Setting up a live staging site and migrating this again just isn’t a great approach because of time restraints. At the moment I’ve almost successfully migrated my site over to this localhost. It would be too much work and a massif headache to go through the process again, especially since there is no guarantee the issues can be resolved. Plus, I need to have this issue fixed locally, My localhost is a key component in my Development process, as it is for a lot of us.

I’ll read up on Port forwarding and Dynamic DNS. It also doesn’t seem like the best solution but I’m not worried about breaking my current site URL structure because that can be resolved with a change in the Database, hosts file, .htacces, Wp_config and possibly even the functions.php. All things I’ve gotten comfortable with during my migration. However, if it mens multiple references in the sql database will be untied and permilink issues, than I wouldn’t bother.

It i my bet that this is actually a widespread problem. I’ve read that many people have the Rev_slider export issue and the error is common. Problem is, anyone in our situation can’t get support from Themepunch unless we purchase a licence.

[PelanPelanParticipant]

I wanted to update you on a bit of good progress. I was able to work out the tunnel issue through pagekite and after some Troubleshooting I have successfully gotten the site through a http tunnel. I have even been able to get into the admin area. I did some url tweaking to make it work and there are some image issues.

Now that I have something working, I am going to see if I can fix those image issues. I’m also going to test if I canreset the urls back to it’s original. My problem might might have been just a simple option I didn’t tic within Mamp that allowed for it to server to lan as well.

Tomorrow I will hopefully have a private link for you to access the tunnel, link to the WP admin, and hopefully even a link into the root folder but I’m not sure. Either way, I should have at least partial access into the site.

LB

[ZeshanMember]

Hi LB,

Thanks for updating! Let us know when the URLs are up and running.

Cheers!

[PelanPelanParticipant]

Unfortunately I spent an entire afternoon and evening working on this and still haven’t been able to get the service to pull the site through a http tunnel method?. There is a service on MMAP that makes it easy to look at a local site via any device you want by just ticking an option. It’s very handy, it is called Xip.io. Unfortunately it only works for any device that is sharing your personal home/wireless network. It all seemed to be working until I realised that it. Once I took my phone off my network (using only data) the link didn’t work.

The closest I’ve come so far is that I have managed to get access to the root folder with links to every file, which you may need at some point. The problem is WordPress. The WordPress index.php and the wp-blog-header.php (actually any file that isn’t static i,e, .html) aren’t recognised. Part of the issue is that WP links are absolute and not relative; unfortunately even after using a suggested relative link plugin, I still can’t get it to work. I’ve tried everything from reconfiguring my vhost, to adding the below define strings to the wp-config file.

adding define('WP_HOME',     'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
define('WP_SITEURL',  'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);  

This string allowes anyone to edit the WP url to anything they need (for debugging purposes) pagekite.me without breaking the site. In my case, to SOMENAME-It also didn’t work. All I ever get is page that saying, “It Works!”.

“(Laughing) Okay, Apache server, thanks for being so optimistic but it feels more like you are mocking me.Why not just say, ‘you did it!, good for you’ and hand me a participation ribbon. The upside to this, by the time I figure this out, I could just get a job as a network administrator.

While I continue my exploration into the abyss of Apache servers, mysql, myphp, and httpd configuration, can you clarify if there is a way to manually place this slider template into the site by editing all the entries pertaining to the Rev Slider in the sql database and placing the correlating files into the correct folders within Wp Content?

Thanks and I’ll keep you posted.
LB

[RadModerator]

Hi there,

Yeah, I had a hard time configuring local installation too. Quite a time consuming, but worth the knowledge.

About your question, it’s not possible. All data are saved in serialized format, any change, or just a single character change may break those if you directly do in the database.

Thanks, keep us posted 🙂

[Author]

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