[Resolved] Totally Corrupted Site – Need to recreate from scratch

[Jessica]

Ssomething strange happened – I am now no longer able to deploy any of the edits I made. When I do, the database is totally corrupted and the site looks like something from 2001.

I tried rebooting, reinstalling and updating. I deactived, deleted, cleaned up, etc. Nothing is working and it’s only happening on my GP sites. All 3 of them. So I’m terrified to deploy anything live anywhere. I had to restore the old versions of the sites that were there before.

Sites I had created before starting to use GP are ok so I’m about to quit this field and start flipping burgers.

Any idea how to fix the database? Or what might be causing this? I’m left with keeping the old sites and losing months of work, or restarting from scratch AGAIN in hopes that things work ok.

[Tom]

Hi Jessica,

What do you mean by “corrupted” database?

What kind of edits? Page edits? Post edits? Customizer edits?

What exactly does it look like when you say “something from 2001”?

Are you sure you’re not using a plugin on all three sites that might be causing the issue?

GP itself has a lot of people using it (50,000+) without issues like this, so it’s unlikely it’s something in the theme that will make you have to completely restart.

It could be a plugin, or it could be something on your server itself.

More information is needed in order for me to point you in the right direction.

Let me know 🙂

[Jessica]

Probably dramatic to say “from 2001” but for the most part, everything that I see on my dev environment won’t upload. There is a constant error in importing the database.

So basically, despite having everything in place correctly (as I’ve done a hundred times even on this specific site), nothing took. The layouts, Theme, menus, styles, etc. I get an error when I import the database so I’m working with the DesktopServer folks to see if they can help but its as if something changed in the past 1-3 months that have made deploying sites virtually impossible.

The thought of starting over makes me want to vomit. I won’t post the crappy corrupted imported site here publicly b/c I don’t want anyone seeing it.

It’s just that basically… there SOME elements that are there, but none of the customizations took. So there’s a ton of overlapping stuff that makes me totally baffled.

I know a lot of people use this without incident and until recently, I have not had these issues. But it’s happening and rendering impossible the ability for me to deploy the new site I’ve worked on for over 2 months. So it’s looking great on my local dev environment but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve deployed so many sites so I’m not understanding why this is so different. I don’t know how to repair a database, what to look for or why this is even happening.

I’ll see what DesktopServer says. As if this week/weekend couldn’t have gotten any shittier ;(

[Jessica]

Took me 12 hours to fix the database issues but it’s finally working. It’s deployed but I have more work to do to add/edit, etc.

This is ONE of the sites I’ve been working on (on and off) for the past few months while doing other “things”

Jessica Rosengard Designs

Be gentle. I know it’s not done. Sigh. 😀

[Tom]

Your site looks amazing! Love it! It’s awesome seeing WP Show Posts in the wild, it looks great.

So your sites are working on localhost, and then breaking when you deploy them on a live server?

One thing you want to be very careful of is search/replacing the URL in the database. Doing so will break Sections as everything is stored in a serialized table, and replacing the URL will break the table.

Perhaps try something like Duplicator (I use it all the time with GP).

Or if you manually migrate the site, use a plugin like Velvet Blues Update URLs to update the URLs from your localhost to the live site.

[Jessica]

Thanks 🙂

Strangely, the app I use (DesktopServer) exports the dev site and changes everything (links for example) for me. I’ve never had an issue like this before. It had to have been a plugin conflict or something. All urls are pretty much always changed for me so I never have to do a search and replace.

I honestly think it was breaking b/c I was deploying a WHOLE new site, framework, theme, page templates, etc. The server was NOT happy. But I got it working.

I plan to use WP Show posts more but I had to just get this going. 😉

More to do but at least it’s up! FINALLY! My old site was fine but I wanted something totally different. GOD I need a 3-day nap!

[Tom]

Well I’m glad you got it working – your site looks great.

Definitely stick with making websites over flipping burgers 🙂

[Jessica]

haha! I’m flattered. It could be (and will be better), as all thing are 😉

I worked hard on the responsive stuff too so check that out!!

Thanks for all your help and putting up with my bullshit. (2016 really sucked!)

[Tom]

Looks awesome on mobile as well 🙂

[Author]

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