Migration between single and multi-site instances

[JeremyParticipant]

Hi there, I just purchased the developer license for UpdraftPlus hoping to do a site-to-site migration. This should have made my life easy, but I am migrating a site from a single instance into a multi-network/multi-site instance.

Is there a way to make this work? Has anyone found a workaround? I did disassemble the SQL files and found that even when I made a backup of a site on my multi-site instance, ALL site information was saved (I have over 40 sites using one WP core).

Please help, I may need to code around this, or build in new functionality, but right now I was trying to save some time in migration by using this, guess I’m out of luck there :)

Any insight would be good.

[IlyaParticipant]

Who is/are your hosts? Can they do one click backup type of stuff on the single wordpress instance?

[JeremyParticipant]

I am only migrating one site from a host to my host, where I have a HEAVILY customized WP instance. I can export DBs just fine, but there are intricacies to WP and was hoping that Updraft could handle it.

I have multiple types of backups already taken and been going through and running diffs as needed, but it’s a long manual process.

[udadminKeymaster]

Hi Jeremy, Ilya,

UD does not currently have any features for turning one kind of install into a different kind or merging separate things – e.g. a single site becomes part of a multisite. It can only backup, restore and clone an entire WP install.

David

[RaphaelParticipant]

hi

just have the same problem – wanted migrate a singlesite to a my new multisite with UD. couldnt find a way to tell UD where to place the single-backup. bad luck for me too …

there is a description how to do by hand: https://codex.wordpress.org/Migrating_Multiple_Blogs_into_WordPress_3.0_Multisite

cheers!

[JeremyParticipant]

Thanks for the response with the link – I read through that years ago :)

I’ve actually started to architect a solution hopefully to roll into UpDraft that can migrate remotely. This was something that my team and I had under consideration as a standalone product about 7 years ago when we developed a model for large organizations.

Currently, I run a heavily customized installation running 14 different networks that have a total of 45 sites, all from one wordpress core and database. The migration mechanism in UpDraft takes the entire DB, which is not ideal, as it pulls down data from all sites.

The primary issue with the method noted in the Codex is the transfer of alternate tables, settings and related information that support the site, not just content. That’s where the real gotcha comes in. In the end, I migrated content, exported a lot of sql data and ran translations to modify paths, etc to get it working. All in all, spent about 6 hours on the migration.

I am a happy camper at this point, but would love to see UpDraft have the ability to migrate sites regardless of the structure, and I’m sure someday they’ll get there.

Thanks again for your response (and link)!

[RaphaelParticipant]

you are welcome – dispite it didnt help you :-). but sometimes just a other viewpoint helps me to get on.

[PeterParticipant]

Any updates now (april 2016) on how to solve this via Updraft or otherwise?

Would prefer some kind of automation via a plugin like UPD+, rather than “manual” version.

Just wanna export a complete website w plugins, theme, prefs etc to a folder I can give to another web hotel for installation there (client moving).

Thankful for any tips or pointers!

[udadminKeymaster]

Hi Peter,

Please see:
https://updraftplus.com/forums/topic/best-way-to-migrate-a-single-site-from-wp-network/#post-153006

Best wishes,
David

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