How to speed up migrations

Migration of a WordPress site can take some time, especially for very large sites. So we sometimes get asked if there is some way to make it faster. Which is important for migrations that are being run many times.

WP Synchro is in general very performance optimized, as one of our key points is to move data quickly. So in terms of server configuration, there is not really any magic configuration to make it much faster.

Server-side optimization:

On the server side, network speed from server<>server is often the primary bottleneck, as we try to move as much data as possible. After that, having a well powered machine for the database and where the PHP is executed is also important.

Application-side optimization:

On the application side, there are a few important aspects that affect performance:

• Make sure to enable the MU plugin in the 'Setup' menu. This makes sure that no plugins and themes are loaded when the request is WP Synchro related. It has no impact on the site in all other cases. This has major impact on performance and also prevents many other kinds of interference from other plugins or theme. It will save you from a lot of headaches.
• Limit the amount the data that needs to be considered or migrated. If you do a full migration each time, WP Synchro needs to migrate all the data in the database and index+migrate all files on the site.

How to limit migration size:

The key is to use a custom migration, which can be selected in the "Preconfigured migration" section when setting up the migration.

There you can select exactly which parts of the database and which files or directories you want to migrate. Try to be as specific as possible. The smaller the "changeset" WP Synchro needs to consider, the faster the migration will run.