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SmartCrawl Pro: Custom meta assign products lost after site launch.

I launched a new WooCommerce site for a client last week. She had added custom metadata with Smart Crawl to many of the products but since putting the site live, this custom metadata has vanished.

The product URLs have changed as the site has changed from dev to live domain and we’ve also implemented the “Perfect SEO URLs” plugin which removes the default “store” and “product” slugs.

It’s the same site, same files, and database. It was just DNS that changed it from dev to live.

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 7:18:21
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  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Matt,

    Hope you’re doing well.

    I was doing some tests and migrated my test site in order to try replicating this but I’m afraid that I was unable to see the issue on my end.

    I tried testing with “Perfect SEO URLs” as well but I’m afraid that plugin can’t be used at all without the activation key so I was unable to see if it could’ve been related to this.

    What you can try is restoring your database before this started happening and perhaps that will get back your SEO data.

    There’s also no need to restore entire DB, wp_postmeta table will be enough.

    Do you have any Snapshot backups before this issue started happening?

    If you do then try restoring that backup, for DB select only wp_postmeta table and don’t restore any files.

    I would suggest creating a full backup of the current site before doing this just to stay on the safe side.

    Let us know if that worked.

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Matt
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Hi Predrag,

    I did attempt to take a Snapshot before we launched the site but it failed and I didn’t notice so never tried again.

    The client has entry-level hosting as the site is new and not expecting much traffic yet, not all Snapshots requirements were met so it’ll be a hosting issue rather than Snapshot issue there.

    The only Snapshots I have prior to that were from before the client says they had entered their custom meta data.

    I have a feeling this is a client error rather than a site issue so have gone back and pressed them for more information (I never saw this meta data they claim to have lost). They’re not happy they lost their work but if I find they did something wrong and explain it to them they might accept it.

    If I find the client was miraculously doing everything correctly I’ll report back but this has never happened before with site launches of exactly the same scenario.

    Thanks,

    Matt

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Matt

    Thank you for your response.

    I think that you’re right – if the only thing that’s been changed to move the site to “live” was the DNS setting, that shouldn’t cause any data loss. So, it might actually be a “human error”, unless it’s indeed the “Perfect SEO URLs” plugin which we are not able to test, unfortunately.

    I’m thinking of yet another possible option: maybe we’re all missing something here and e.g. plugin (like aforementioned Perfect SEO URLs or some other tool) caused that the data actually is there but it’s not “fetched” properly – in other words, due to some conflict, SmartCrawl simply cannot find a relationship between the product post and that custom meta? That’s more of a guess rather than a diagnosis but I wouldn’t exclude that either. Having direct access to the database (e.g. via phpMyAdmin) you could actually take a look at current wp_postmeta table and try to find out what meta data is stored there for those “product” type posts…

    Having that said, I think it’s a good shot to try to get more information from your Client anyway so let’s see what you can find :slight_smile: Keep us updated, please!

    Best regards,

    Adam