WordPress MU

I need to transfer a Wordpress MU install over to a different domain. I have successfully transferred all of the files to the new domain's home on the server, and have also successfully cloned and installed a new database.

After a little extra grunt work, the site seems to be functioning nicely and all is well. Not quite.

After logging in to the admin area, I quickly noticed that the Plugins panel was missing as well as the entire "Site Admin" panel.

Of course, much of that grunt work involved manually going through the huge database and changing all occurrences of the former domain to the new domain while being careful to tediously change the S:xx digits to match the new domain name, which happened to be one character shorter than the previous domain.

I am guessing that the reason these panels are not appearing is simply a permissions error of some sort. I am using the Roll/Capability plugin, and immediately thought it was the culprit, but that does not seem to be the case.

Among many other attempts, I have manually cleared the "active_plugins" in the "wp_options" table as recommended in a few threads in this forum, but that didn't make the missing panels magically appear either.

Once again, everything in the front-end works perfectly... it's just the Site Admin and Plugin panels that are missing in the back-end.

And finally, it is important to note that all plugins are working fine. I have the "Quick Configuration Links" plugin installed so I can manually reach each plugin's admin page, but that does not allow me to install new plugins.

Does anyone know what the problem could be? For several days I have searched high and low for the solution or at least a hint, but I keep finding dead ends.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

- Erik

Sounds like you somehow wound up with a SINGLE WP install. The kicker:
"wp_options"

This should be wp_1_options for the main blog.

Aloha, and thanks for your reply, Andrea!

I was able to fix my problem... both the plugin and site admin panels are now correctly accessible and I have full access to the site's admin again. Weird.

I am 90% certain that the error was because I did NOT disable the plugins before backing up and transferring the database. I know that I was supposed to, so I learned a new lesson today!

On a related side note...

Is there an easier way to change the domain throughout the entire database? I know you can search-and-replace manually but there were thousands of entries that were part of an array like this:

a:1:{i:0;s:0:"";}

So I understand that "a" is for how many entries are in that array, "i" is the id of the individual entry, and "s" is the number of letters in that particular entry.

My challenge was that my domain name was one character shorter than the current one, which required me to subtract one from each instance of "s".

For example...
( a:1:{i:0;s:17:"http://mysite.com";} )
needed to become
( a:1:{i:0;s:16:"http://mysite.tv";} )

This had to be done manually for every instance, which literally took a full day of work and lots of eye drops. The "s" variable changed for each instance as well since there was additional text in many entries.

Is there an easier way that I am missing? I assume that this would be a huge problem for anyone moving or cloning a site.

Thanks again, Andrea!

Hi Omaui,

I'm having a very similar issue as the one you've described above in that I have no Admin or Plugins panels. However, my installs are fresh. I say "installs" because I've done a SINGLE WP install and MU install, both using the same DB. I don't *think* this should prove an issue, but alas there is one.

Andrea mentioned above that there should be a wp_1_options table, which I have (along with a wp_options for the single install).

Am I looking at doing a manual update in the same way you had to fix yours? Again, I haven't migrated anything...

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I can't say for sure if that's it, but it probably isn't helping. :)

Another thought: if you are logged in as admin, you'll see a message on every screen in the backend. It will be just under the header area and in light yellow, and will say

"Hi admin! You are logged in as the Site Administrator!"

If you don't see that, you are not logged in as a site admin."

If you're using fresh-page plugin (flutter) there is a conflict of variables in RCCWP_Menu.php file. Just look for $menu, that should give you a start.
This is what I've changed and it works:

foreach ($menu as $k => $v) {
if($k > 0) $new_menu[$k+$offset]=$v;
}

$menu = $new_menu;

--------- and here:

foreach ($menu as $k => $v) {
if($k > 0) break;
$new_menu[$k]=$v;
}
$base=0;

The flutter answer above didn't make much sense to me, but it could be because of a recent flutter update having changed the code that lokers is referencing.

Here is the change I made to RCCWP_Menu.php (for Flutter 1.1, around line 457):

foreach ($menu as $k => $v) {
				//HACKS
				if ($k == 2) $site_admin = $v;
				////////////

				if($k > 5) $new_menu[$k+$offset]=$v;
			}

			$menu = $new_menu;
			$menu[2] = $site_admin;

Thanks to lokers for pointing me in the right direction though.

Thanks :)