Episode 60: Solving the Problem of Database Merging

Update 2016-08-16: “Data Hawk” referenced in this cast has been renamed to Mergebot. Check out the latest news about Mergebot

We would like to thank Gravity Flow for sponsoring today’s podcast. Gravity Flow allows sites to automate business processes for internal routing, scheduling, reporting and more. You can go to GravityFlow.io to learn more.

Today, we are talking about what’s been going on with Brad and Pippin and hearing about a problem (and a potential solution!) commonly experienced by those who are merging databases.

Brad’s Update:

During the last episode, Brad had said that he expected Migrate Pro 1.6 to release by the time the podcast went out, but listeners who were looking for it might have realized that it released a bit late. There was a bug that they had to work through, and it ended up going out on April 25. The good news is that they’ve gotten lots of great feedback, and Brad is happy to announce that renewals have spiked.

In other news, Brad is working on the next version of WP Offload S3, which will be a big change to the way they store URLs in the content of the site. In addition, they’re reorganizing the site’s theme and are in the process of hiring another developer. They have a new developer on trial right now.

Pippin’s Update:

Pippin recently went to San Diego for work and had a great time. The convention was held in a great location in an awesome venue, and there was a good attendee list. His Q&A; session was called “Ask Me Anything About Plugins,” and he had a lot of people asking questions about plugin development as well as business development. In all, it was a great time to meet some developers and catch up with team members that he doesn’t see often.

Pippin also announced that AffiliateWP 1.8 is being launched next week, and that Content Pro 2.5 shipped the morning that the podcast was being recorded. In addition, Pippin updated to Zapier, which is a great program for those needing to connect apps and automate tasks.

On today’s podcast, you’ll also hear about:

Brad’s follow-up on last week’s episode about the full-screen UIs. There are several plugins available to take over the whole dashboard of WordPress. They include Coming Soon Pro and Kanban for WordPress.

Brad’s explanation of why database mergers can turn into a big headache, particularly with ecommerce systems.

An overview of how people generally keep track of the changes that they’re making during these mergers, and why they tend not to work very well.

A new solution that Brad is working on! It’s called Mergebot, and it will save the changes that are made to a WP site in a cloud app, which  you can later apply to your live site.

Pippin’s technicals questions (and Brad’s answers) about Mergebot.

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