Moving a local installation to the server - settings not working on server?

Question

I moved my local Wordpress to the server and some of the theme settings as well as settings I made for plugins locally are not working on the server. This is what I did:

1. Uploaded the local code to the server
2. Exported my local database and replaced the local URLs with the server URLs
3. Imported the database using phpmyadmin on the server
4. Edited the settings in wp-config.php to connect to the db on the server

Now I accessed the server installation just to figure that most of the settings I did locally are not working. Things like slider settings, theme settings for colors and so on. Posts and pages are there though.

I checked the database file I imported and the tables are there and the tables are also imported on the server. For example I have a slider setup locally called "myslider". When I look in the SQL file that I imported, I can see the slider is inserted into the database but it is not shown in wp-admin on the server as it was locally.

Did I do something wrong? I looked at some tutorials and they do the same more or less.

Thank for helping!

Thanks!

Answer 1

I think your process for migrating to the live server was sound. I'm pretty sure that your issue is with step #2, more specifically the replacing of local URLs with the server URLs. While you likely replaced all of the URLs correctly, it's possible that the serialized data in the database didn't get changed to reflect the change in the server URL.

I like to use the WP Migrate DB plug-in to facilitate the URL replacement when switching from a server environment (i.e. local to live server). That plug-in is very easy to use and updates all serialized data according to the changes in the URLs.