I can’t think of a really good reason to do what you want to do but if you must do so then do a really good backup of files and the database first.
Export your site via WXR and don’t forget to export the media.
Rebuild the site and upload the upload directory with your media library there.
Import the rest.
You’ll just about have back everything you had before. Your database might be slightly different because the table structure will probably change to the InnoDB Engine and you might not wind up with a few core or plugin files that never hurt anything anyway.
I’ve done this for various reasons in the past… usually because I didn’t know better at that time. Most of my sites now are still the same from 5 years back with just the updates being added as needed.
If there’s an issue you are trying to correct you might be better off doing a bit of troubleshooting to get rid of that problem instead. If you need our help to figure things out then create a new topic for that and let us try to help you.
This is the same advice I’d give if you were moving to a new host or splitting out the WordPress across multiple hosts.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
I understand you think what I’m doing is a bit crazy.
But, the site was acquired from another owner. It’s a 12 years old WP site, and had custom changes to it.
I just don’t know what the other owner did with it. Some plugins don’t work properly even though I’ve disabled all the plugins except that one. I know the plugin works well though because I’ve installed it on two other sites which have multiple plugins and it works fine.
I’ve tried changing the theme to WP default and other stuff. I’m pretty sure rebuilding will be faster than debugging it. Plus, I want to change the theme anyways.
I’m hoping rebuilding it is just as easy.
Based on what you described, I think it’ll be much faster.
I think I’ll have to install one more plugin to resize images according to the new theme, but, otherwise, everything you laid out was how I planned to do it as well.
Thanks for confirming.
