Synopsis:
I work for a company that wants to rebrand one of its holdings and integrate its standalone WP with its existing MAIN standalone WP instance. Our host only allows one db per instance and I’m restrained from using sub-domains so we are going with a hail mary approach and setting up a Multisite on the main website. Then creating a new subsite and importing the existing rebranded site into that.
Recap:
Site A - The Main WP site - standalone originally - now turned in Multisite
SIte B - The Existing standalone WP site - to be imported into Site A as a subsite stationed in a sub-directory
The Problem(s):
When I go to import the XML I generated from Site B into Site A via WP CLI, I don’t get all the information carried over. I also have to run it a few times due to some errors. The site is using DIVI and I make sure to import it’s Options, Builder, and Customizer settings. Main Issues are: display on pages is missing page settings for CSS and menus are not mapped correctly after the import so I have to update each template in Divi > Theme Builder
Grievances:
In hindsight, I think this process could have been alleviated by reskinning the site after the multisite was set up fresh, but even then WP disagrees with using sub-directories on an existing site.
Any advice on this? Right now we’re working on timing the amount of extra work it will take to fix the presets and carry over page by page, the templates from the src site.
Since Divi does so much that is page specific customization, I can see how this might not do automatic conversions or imports easily.
The only thing I would add is that maybe it’s not too late to avoid making this a multiste? There’s a lot of added complexity to multisites which may or may not add to more costly maintenance due to the need for performance improvements or limitations on the kinds of plugins that work correctly under a multisite installation.
Either way, if you’re set on going the multisite route, you’re probably on the right path for scoping out what it takes to manually migrate and QA each piece of content.
Thanks for the reply Ben, it’s good to just have a discussion on things like this and I appreciate your feedback. We are dead set on multisite but we figured out the extra work in our situation won’t take more than a couple of hours and we managed to settle on a process that accepts and affirms there will be silly issues revolving around Divi not importing things the right way. At the end of the day it boils down to the expectations set by management and I’m thankful to have a learning opportunity and grow more as a Web Developer.
Your point about the complexity is very true and I’m glad you highlighted this. We will be redesigning the site in the coming year so we will have a very nicely timed opportunity to fix all this ‘mess’ as I call it with two separate builders, redirect plugins, and general plugin bloat. I’ve actually got google sheet with literally all 77 plugins on the combined testing env and flagged ones that concern me or custom ones from vendors in the past with no versioning history
It’s also nice to be validated that I’m on the right path. I do have a google doc I’m scribbling all my brain matter into with “don’t forget this” or “remember to backup at this step”. And boy, being suddenly the lead on this has got me thinking more about other stakeholders and making sure everyone is communicating.