Vent: A client's 'simple' website migration took me three full days to fix

Everyone says to just use a plugin for moving a WordPress site, but that's what got me in trouble. The client insisted on using a specific one they heard about on a podcast, and it completely broke their custom theme's layout. I spent the first day just figuring out what went wrong. The next two days were me manually rebuilding the CSS and fixing broken image paths one by one. What was supposed to be a 4-hour job turned into 24 hours of billed work. Has anyone else had a migration tool just totally fail on a site with a lot of custom code?

3 comments

3 Comments

hugo_cooper3mo ago

Tell me about it... my last migration corrupted the whole database.

paul_morgan3mo ago

Plugins can be a total trap with custom stuff. That's why manual moves are worth the extra time up front, even if it's boring. You end up knowing exactly where everything is and how it's wired together. Those automated tools just guess, and they guess wrong a lot. Sounds like you learned the hard way, but at least the client paid for all those hours.

henry_grant2mo ago

Honestly, three days sounds pretty standard for untangling a bad migration. Those plugins are a gamble with custom work. At least you got paid for the fix, unlike some horror stories. Hugo_cooper's database mess is a way worse outcome than broken CSS.