OnPoint Plugins

Go Live Update Urls –Troubleshooting

Note: The PRO version  includes URL testing which catches common errors before running. 

Not all urls are updating

Sometimes urls will get stored in the database with an inconsistent scheme or without the trailing / at the end of a URL. These types of inconsistencies may easily be resolved by running the plugin without the scheme nor trailing slash.

For example if you were changes http://test.com to http://newdomain.com you would enter the following settings when running the plugin:

  • Old URL = test.com
  • New URL = newdomain.com

That will clear up and dangling urls which did not update.

Server configuration

The most common issue when going live is caused by the server or domain’s DNS not being setup to handle the new domain. If you enter the new domain in your browser, and do not reach your website, this is most likely the issue.

The following is required for any domain on any server (not just WordPress sites):

  1. The server must be configured to support the domain.
  2. The server must be configured to point the domain to the directory containing the site’s files.
  3. The DNS for the domain must be pointed to the server.

URL typos

If a typo occurs, you may restore the site by reverting the database using the backup you made before running the plugin. If the site is still accessible, you may be able to fix the database by running this plugin again, with this time entering the typo as the Old URL and the correct URL as the New URL.

Common Typos include:

  1. Adding a / to the end of the old url and not to the new url.
  2. Adding an http:// to the beginning of the new url and not the old url.

Restoring a broken site

If you have a backup, you may restore your database using it to restore functionality.

If you don’t have a backup, you may restore your database manually using these steps:

  1. Open your database in an editing tool such as phpMyAdmin or Adminer.
  2. Locate your options table which will be named something like wp_options.
  3. Find the row with option_name set to siteurl and make note of the current option_value
  4. Update the option_value to the original URL for row with option_name set to siteurl
  5. Update the option_value to the original URL for row with option_name set to home
  6. Log back into the WordPress admin.
  7. Run this plugin again but this time enter the value you noted in step 3 as the Old URL and the original URL as the New URL.

Script debug mode

If you are having issues with the admin area breaking or not loading you may enable script debug mode which provides more robust error information in the browser console.

You may enable script debug mode in the following ways:

  1. Add a following line to your site’s wp-config.php file:
    1. define( 'SCRIPT_DEBUG', true );
  2. Add the following parameter to the current URL of the Go Live tools page.
    1. &script-debug=true
    2. Example: wp-admin/tools.php?page=go-live-update-urls-settings&script-debug=true

If you have having issues, please enable script debug mode and submit a support request with the console information.

Serialized data

Go Live Update Urls does fully supporting updating serialized data. However, some plugins or themes will store the result of full PHP classes in the database. While frowned upon, this will technically work as long as the PHP class remains available.

If the PHP class which is stored in the database and is later removed from the codebase, the corresponding serialized data cannot be updated. Rows containing this type of invalid data will be skipped during update and logged to the PHP error log or debug log if enabled.

If you see something like this in your error log:

Go Live skipped row because it contains an unavailable PHP class named <name>.

Some rows are being skipped because a PHP class is missing. Restoring the missing PHP class will allow the data to be updated for the skipped rows. The skipping of rows may optionally be disabled using this filter.