I'm considering building a plugin which can export and import a site's custom options settings.
On export, it simply pulls all of the custom options from wp_options and create a zip file of them (perhaps as a csv or xml). On import, it would take the zipped data file and extract it into the site's wp_options table.
I'm sure this is not as easy as it sounds? What are some of the potential challenges?
That's option #1. Option #2 would be quite a bit more controlled in that it would only export those options which were prefixed with "my_" for example. In that way, I'd be only grabbing the options that I know are my custom options.
Any ideas or thoughts?
The next logical step would be to essentially create a clone file of the site, with all plugins, themes, posts, pages, tags, comments, categories, etc...
This clone file could be imported into an empty site, thus creating a baseline site in seconds.