Why phpMyAdmin breaks WordPress plugin settings during domain migration
WordPress stores plugin configurations and widget settings in PHP serialized format, which embeds byte-length metadata alongside string values. Tools like phpMyAdmin and raw SQL statements replace string content without updating these length prefixes, causing PHP's unserialize() to return false and making plugins behave as if their settings were never saved. The WP-CLI command wp search-replace avoids this by operating at the PHP layer, deserializing data before replacement and recalculating all length prefixes afterward. Developers are advised to export a full database backup before any migration and run wp search-replace with the --dry-run flag to preview changes. Targeting specific tables such as wp_options or wp_postmeta, and skipping the guid column in wp_posts, further reduces the risk of unintended side effects.
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