Database Migrations Made Easy Thanks To The WP DB Migrate Plugin

WP DB Migrate is an awesome plugin created by Brad Touesnard. This plugin makes it easy to transfer the database contents between WordPress powered sites. While there is a Pro version of this plugin available, my experience was with the free version, hosted on the WordPress plugin repository.

I needed a quick and easy way to move a database of information from a public WordPress website to my local install. Since I didn’t have access to phpMyAdmin to retrieve the database, WP Migrate DB was the next best thing. It’s as easy as installing the plugin on the site I’m migrating data from and then installing it on the site I’m moving the data to. After installation, you’ll find the settings located within the Tools menu.

Easily Perform Search and Replace Before Exporting

One of my favorite features of this plugin is the ability to replace the site URL and the file path to match the location of the site you’re migrating to. It’s the equivalent of performing a search and replace during a normal MySQL export/import routine. Being able to perform this task without having to use SQL statements or another plugin is a big time saver.

Changing the site URL is easy!

This plugin also provides the following options:

Replace GUIDs

Disable the exporting of spam comments

Disable the exporting of post revisions

Save the database file to your computer

Compress the file with gzip

Works As Expected

The plugin worked without any problems. I was able to download the MySQL file with the changes I applied and then I imported that file into my local install of WordPress. Now my local install is in synch with the public version. Although it does take some time to import the file, it’s still not enough to motivate me to figure out how to mirror the sites at least once a day. However, if I decided that this would become a routine, I would upgrade to the Pro version which contains the ability to pull remote databases and push them to my local install. That feature alone would be worth the $39 dollars which also includes updates and support for one year.

I realize there are other plugins that provide a similar feature set, but WP Migrate DB made the process so smooth, it was worthy of sharing.