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Back up, restore and migrate your WordPress website with UpdraftPlus
Before WordPress 3.5, a new WordPress Network (i.e., Multisite) installation stored media uploads (images, etc.) in the uploads directory for the “main” site on the network (site ID 1) and in a separate directory called blogs.dir for other sites. By default, blogs.dir was located at wp-content/blogs.dir, and UpdraftPlus’s multisite add-on backed it up separately.
From WordPress 3.5 onwards, a newly set up (i.e., not upgraded) multisite stores all blogs’ uploads in the uploads directory (wp-content/uploads by default). This change leads to fewer backup zips and more consistency.
When you have a backup from a pre-3.5-era multisite and wish to restore it into a 3.5-or-later multisite, you encounter an issue: you have a backup of blogs.dir, but your new site has no such directory.
This issue does not arise if you have only upgraded your pre-3.5-era multisite to 3.5 or later. In such cases, WordPress runs in a compatibility mode and retains the blogs.dir setup. Additionally, this issue is irrelevant if you are restoring a database from a pre-3.5-era multisite because WordPress’s compatibility handling will be triggered.
To address this issue, follow these steps:
blogs.dir
Backup Zip
blogs.dir
backup zip created by UpdraftPlus. It contains subdirectories for each site on the network, like blogs.dir/2
, blogs.dir/3
, etc.uploads
.sites
Subdirectory
uploads
directory, create a subdirectory named sites
(i.e., uploads/sites
).uploads/sites
blogs.dir
directory into uploads/sites
. You will now have directories like uploads/sites/1
, uploads/sites/2
, etc.uploads
directory again. Ensure the zip file has one subdirectory at the top level (uploads
).Alternatively, you can perform the restoration and then manually copy the contents from your blogs.dir
backup zip into wp-content/uploads/sites
on your new site.
If you need to transfer content from a post-3.5-era setup into a pre-3.5 multisite, you can reverse the above procedure.
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