Reply To: export data from an older version?

02/14/2018 at 9:48 am #451713
Steven Zahm
Keymaster

@ karin

RE: I am still using Version 8.1.5. It workes fine, and I did not dare to update in case all entries would be lost again.

I am assuming you are referring to this where you had used phpMyAdmin to export and transfer the Connections tables. Is that correct? The loss wasn’t caused by Connections… The best solution would have been to update Connections as the updates were released. Version 8.1.5 is now about 3.5 and years old…

RE: Is there a possibility of “transfering” the old data to the new Connection?

Yes, this is very doable, even with such an old version. Since the latest version is already installed on the new site this is what you need to do on the odl site:

  • Make a full site backup of the old site, files and the whole database, so you can revert the entire site if something goes wrong. I personally use BackupBuddy but there are freely available plugins which can be sued.
  • Update Connections to the latest version by using the “Update now” link on the WordPress plugins admin page like you normally would.

After a successful upgrade you have a couple options to move the data:

  • You could use the CSV Export Tool to export your entries and then use the CSV Import extension to import that file on the new site. I would recommend using the beta version that you would have access to after you purchase the extension.
  • You could use phpMyAdmin to do a sql dump of the Connections tables on the old site (after you’ve upgraded Connections) and use phpMyAdmin to import that sql dump into the new site. If you follow this method, do this
    • Before the sql dump, navigate to the Connections Settings admin page and click the search tab. Disable the FULLTEXT option.
    • On the new site you would first have to drop the existing tables created by Connections when you installed it.
    • After you import the sql dump you will have to rename all dozen or so of the Connections tables so it has the same WPDB prefix as the rest of the tables.
    • Then you can enable the FULLTEXT search option.

Hope this helps!