Best practice for events migration

[Andrew]

Hello Tribe,
We have a live site with TEC/ECP running for several years now. Our plan is to prototype a new site (and theme) and then migrate all live site events to the prototype site. I have seen several ways for doing events migration; mysql exports, WP export tool, Tribe CSV importer. What is the most reliable method for exporting events and then importing them to a new site? Including recurring events. Is it important to migrate TEC/ECP settings (mysql options) as well?
Thank you for all suggestions.

[Barry]

Hi – great question! However, there’s no single best practice and a lot depends on what you feel most comfortable doing, especially since we don’t provide a dedicated export feature and you are therefore going to have to use other tools.

The best I can really suggest is trying a few test runs with different approaches like a MySQL export, WordPress’s own import/export tools and perhaps even a custom script.

Is it important to migrate TEC/ECP settings (mysql options) as well?

That depends, really. If they largely deviate from the defaults then perhaps – but you could also just set things up again the way you want on the new site. Again, it depends on what is going to be fastest in your specific case.

I appreciate that’s all rather vague, but hopefully it gives you a few things to explore.

 

[Andrew]

Hi Barry, The way I understand TEC internals is that events are a custom post type. Is it correct to say that venues and organizers are custom post types as well? If this is the case, then I should be able to use native WP exporter/importer.

My other concern is about event metadata and wp_options that may connect with venues and organizers, and recurring event states. If an import of exported data is done successfully, will a clean install of TEC/ECP automatically recognize all imports, and init associate metadata and wp_options, independent of user settings? Likewise with ‘post ids’ for TEC custom post types and their management. Hmmm, I forget how native WP importer handles post ids.

Or will a simple import of events, venues and organizers be sufficient?

Please pardon all the questions, but I’m unfamiliar with TEC classes and methods or mysql table entries to find all the dependencies.

Thanks again for your advice.

[Barry]

You could certainly give the default import/export tools a whirl, we do indeed leverage custom post types and custom taxonomies. We do know that historically people have hit some hurdles with that, but the best I can suggest is doing a dry run and seeing how it goes.

At this time, a complete import/export of event data is not directly supported and we’re pretty limited in terms of how far we can guide you on this sort of task.

[Author]

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