Wordpress Migration Post Problems

Question

I am currently working on a website, created with WordPress, the website has been compromised with security flaws, because when WordPress was installed they did it with a version of PHP 5.2, also the website is working with WordPress version 5.3.4.

I am looking to make a clean copy of the website, first to be able to install the latest version of PHP to date 7.4, since the website generates errors when I try to change the version of PHP by force.

I am looking to make a copy of the post, with their respective featured images, using the WordPress exporter I have managed to export the entries without a problem, but I cannot export the featured image.

I have tried to export the entries, and then manually upload the images to the uploads folder. It has not worked.

I don't want to migrate the entire site as the template has some styling errors that need to be fixed.

There is a way to migrate blog posts with the featured image, but I haven't figured it out so far, can you give me a hand? Maybe a plugin? Or how can I copy the posts directly to the database from phpMyAdmin, any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this will answer your question or not..

Wordpress separates the Content (pages, posts, media etc) from the design and functionality through the Theme. So you can completely change the design and functionality by changing the Theme, but retain the same content. You can see this in action with a new WP install by switching between TwentyTwenty and TwentyNineteen themes for example.

The reason for mentioning this is that you can have a completely 'clean start' by creating a blank custom theme and switching to it. This will dispense with any poorly built templates etc but means you are starting from scratch (though this may be what you want).

So with that in mind, one potential approach is to take a complete backup of the current site, migrate it to your preferred dev platform (e.g. WAMP/MAMP) and create a completely new Theme container. Switch to that Theme and you have a blank canvas but have retained all of your content, plugins, core config, user/subscribers etc. No messing with export/import utilities which as you say, miss vital stuff. You can even keep a copy of the old Theme (deactivated) for reference as to how the previous developer did stuff.

In terms of how you migrate the site, this is possible via manual backups of both the DB and entire Wordpress directory but there is a need to run specific processes against the SQL in order to update URLs throughout. However, there are free and reliable plugins for this task, so please do a bit of research for migration/duplication plugins.

To create a bare bones theme from scratch, read up here