How do I migrate large site without its content?

  • phil2016

    (@phil2016)


    6 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    I have a large book website with multiple customizations and a 1GB+ DB. I am now creating a second book website and would like to use a duplicate of my 1st book website on it.

    I would like to keep all the plugins / theme / pages but I don’t need all the content (there are 50K+ posts, I don’t need them on the new site, and the Gravity Forms plugin has filled up a lot of tables with MB of data, etc).

    So, I want to copy the current site — without all its GBs of DB content.

    How can I copy my current site, remove the ‘heavy’ DB content (but keep the tables functioning), and install it on a new hosting account with a new domain name?

    I have spent the last week trying to do this with Duplicator Pro, Migrate Guru, All-in-one Migration, Xcloner (and another one) but NONE were successful.

    Although I was able to reduce the Duplicator Pro file down to approx 380mb, it consistently threw up errors and timeouts when trying to install on the new account — which 10+ Siteground techs could not find the solution to — despite increasing ALL possible timeouts on the new account.

    None of the others got that far.

    ALL the others never even get past archive creation on the first site.

    Can anyone suggest a method for doing this? Thanks!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    A lot of table data is interrelated with other tables. It’s very difficult to selectively export only what you want without accidentally corrupting the table relationships. It’s always advisable to clean up a site before exporting it, but if you intend to keep that data on the source site it’s not feasible.

    Unless you are up for tedious table hacking, and have the knowledge to do so correctly, I think you’re better off migrating the entire thing and cleaning it up afterwards. Weigh that effort against simply starting over and copying over certain data like just the pages. You can always copy over your theme and plugin files alone without any issue, though any deviations from default settings will need to be set again.

    Thread Starter phil2016

    (@phil2016)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Thank you for your reply. That makes sense!

    Do you know of a good tutorial / article which describes this process in detail?

    I haven’t yet found an article that describes exactly what I am trying to do, manually.

    Following your post, I have compressed and downloaded the contents of my Public directory for the source site (when it was on my desktop I went into the uploads folder and deleted a few 100s of uploads I don’t need, and some log files and backups from plugins)

    Then I exported the source site Database.

    I guess it’s a simple matter of uploading the public directory files to the new account’s public directory, and importing the sql files into the new account’s phpmyadmin.

    But it’s the next part which I’m less clear about.

    I know I have to update the config file with the new site name / username / password / DB details, etc — but what else do I need to consider.

    What considerations do I need to keep in mind, if I’m using the site for domain1.com and installing it on the account for domain2.com ?

    Many thanks.

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    If the uploads you deleted included media library items, there remain related DB records related to the files that serve little purpose now. I think they’ll still show up in the library, though with missing thumbnail images. That’ll make it easier (but tedious) to pick them out and delete from within WP.

    A general discussion on migrating sites can be found here:

    Moving WordPress

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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