[Resolved] Site broken after domain name change

[Mark]

Hi, I changed my domain name from xxxx.com to yyyyy.com while keeping all content on the same server. The hosting company made the change and after I had edited all the tables on the wordpress MySQL database to change all occurrences of xxx.com to yyyy.com, disabling Cloudflare and Litespeed cache, I was able to visit the site. Trouble is, the site is a bit jumbled up, with the menu items all over the screen, the content all left justified rather than central etc

It looks as though some css is missing or broken.

I have purged all the caches numerous times, to no avail (browser, litespeed, CF).

Is there any way the GP theme or GP+ plugin could be doing this? Do you store any hard coded urls in your files? Any domain names?

Thanks.

[David]

Hi there,

thats a problem with editing database URLs as they may be littered over may tables.
Best thing to do is use a search and replace tool like Velvet Blues Replace URL plugin to update them all to the new URL.

[Mark]

No, I’m an old COBOL programmer and I know how to clear a database of references, better than any plugin. There are NO references to the old URL on any table as a phpMyAdmin database search shows.

Site still broken, CSS a mess.

I’m thinking if GP does not have any URLs stored outside the database, then it must have something to do with a cache somewhere on the net that’s holding on to old stuff. And who knows when that will be released?

All the obvious caches have been flushed repeatedly (browser, Litespeed, Cloudflare)

Possibly also a domain name propagation issue. https://www.whatsmydns.net shows a mixed bag, after 3 days!

[Mark]

Just for completeness, I installed Velvet Blues and ran it using
old-domain.com
new-domain.com

http://www.old-domain.com
http://www.new-domain.com

https://www.old-domain.com
https://www.new-domain.com

In all cases the response was:

ERROR: Something may have gone wrong.
Your URLs have not been updated.
Results
0 Content Items (Posts, Pages, Custom Post Types, Revisions)
Why do the results show 0 URLs updated?
This happens if a URL is incorrect OR if it is not found in the content. Check your URLs and try again.

Clearly, there is no existing old-domain on the database, as I said.

I also doublechecked the database for misspellings of the new domain, just in case I’d made an error. There were no misspellings, only the correct url.

I think propagation has completed, and I’d love to hear any theories as to how a domain name change and simple scan and replace of a domain name can cause this havoc.

[Mark]

BTW footer widgets have disappeared, even from within the admin area. Categories now displayed on page, recent comments, that were not supposed to be there. The header graphic is displaced, the full width box is no longer there. The site has been totally messed up, it’s not worth the days required to put everything back in place, could be the end of this site, ffs.

[Elvin]

Hi there,

I was going to point you to this: https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-the-site-url/ – but I guess its not really needed since you’re going for database tables directly.

I’m thinking if GP does not have any URLs stored outside the database, then it must have something to do with a cache somewhere on the net that’s holding on to old stuff. And who knows when that will be released?

The only thing I could think if that may fit this case is when your Dynamic CSS Print Method on Appearance > Customize > General to “External file” and you didn’t regenerate your CSS after the domain change. But I think this should only affect css properties that has url() on them like background-image. I don’t think this should even cause this big of a broken styling but perhaps it helps to give it a try if you’re using “External file”.

Aside from this particular stylesheet, everything else is dynamic using get_template_directory_uri() for its pathing. https://github.com/tomusborne/generatepress/blob/7b35168f546f83a7abb098a8da3bc0674d49ddeb/inc/general.php

Any chance you could temporarily turn off caching plugins so we could observe the page source for any issues? (broken paths, missing enqueues, etc)

[Mark]

CloudFlare cache bypassed (development mode)
Litespeed turned off
External CSS regenerated from Customize area

No change

Comment welcome

[Elvin]

CloudFlare cache bypassed (development mode)
Litespeed turned off
External CSS regenerated from Customize area

No change

Can you keep them disabled and let us check? So we could inspect.

This’ll give us an clues/ideas if there are any stylesheets that aren’t loaded properly.

Having Litespeed enabled prevents us from inspecting properly as the plugin takes all the stylesheets in and merges it into one file.

[Mark]

Yes, I should have been clearer. They are all off, I have left them off. There is no cache active right now. I will leave it like that until this is solved.

[Mark]

Ah, but that made me think, what about the litespeed cache thru cpanel? I went to cpanel and there is this, which I disabled.

[Mark]

Only other thing that could have caused this was that I uninstalled the Gutenberg plugin just before the domain change. The plugin was highly unstable and stopping me editing widgets etc.

[Mark]

I have scanned the database for a word I used in the missing footer widgets. The word was not found. The footers have been deleted. This is not a CSS issue, something has damaged the database, and deleted content.

Record 79, widget text, has gone to simply: “a:1:{s:12:”_multiwidget”;i:1;}”

It had many paragraphs there before, so how did this happen? I have a backup from a few days ago, showing all the missing text.

[Mark]

I tried to re-insert the widget text manually into the options table, ‘widget_text’ column, and it was automatically deleted back to “a:1:{s:12:”_multiwidget”;i:1;}”

Weeks of work have gone up in flames. I cannot believe it!

[Mark]

There are other people with missing widget problems after uninstalling gutenberg plugin, eg https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gutenberg-plugin-breaks-my-widget-pages/

The missing widgets is only one problem. The menus and page layouts are messed up too.

I am putting the site into maintenance mode. I may never open it again. Disaster

[David]

Can you provide a login to get past the Maintenance mode or an admin login so we can take a closer look ?

[Author]

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