Since every WordPress plugin runs custom PHP code, it can write to the filesystem, your database, and potentially remote storage (e.g. if you use a DropBox backup plugin). In this example I’m going to show how to export settings for iThemes security, since this has a moderately complex installation.<\/p>\n
To see what this look like, you can log into your database and list out the tables:<\/p>\n
\nmysql -u root -p\nselect garysielingcom;\nshow tables;\n<\/pre>\n\n+---------------------------+\n| Tables_in_garysielingcom |\n+---------------------------+\n| wp_appsin_settings |\n| wp_commentmeta |\n| wp_comments |\n| wp_cpd_counter |\n| wp_easy_todo |\n| wp_itsec_lockouts |\n| wp_itsec_log |\n| wp_itsec_temp |\n| wp_layerslider |\n| wp_links |\n| wp_nf_objectmeta |\n| wp_nf_objects |\n| wp_nf_relationships |\n| wp_ninja_forms_fav_fields |\n| wp_ninja_forms_fields |\n| wp_options |\n| wp_popularpostsdata |\n| wp_popularpostssummary |\n| wp_postmeta |\n| wp_posts |\n| wp_term_relationships |\n| wp_term_taxonomy |\n| wp_termmeta |\n| wp_terms |\n| wp_usermeta |\n| wp_users |\n| wp_wsal_metadata |\n| wp_wsal_occurrences |\n+---------------------------+\n<\/pre>\nSome of these are obviously WordPress tables (wp_posts, wp_users, etc), but several are for plugins I’ve installed (e.g. WP Security has several – wp_itsec_lockouts, wp_itsec_log, and wp_itsec_temp). The “wp_” part of the table name is configured at install time – if you have multiple WordPress installs in a database they would have different prefixes. This indicates that WordPress plugins with this prefix are using a WordPress API to set the table up.<\/p>\n
Consequently, if you want to see where these are created, you need to search your site for the table name without the prefix:<\/p>\n
\ngrep -irl itsec_temp * \n<\/pre>\n\nwp-content\/plugins\/better-wp-security\/core\/class-itsec-setup.php\nwp-content\/plugins\/better-wp-security\/core\/class-itsec-lockout.php\nwp-content\/plugins\/better-wp-security\/core\/modules\/backup\/settings.php\nwp-content\/plugins\/better-wp-security\/core\/class-itsec-lib.php\n<\/pre>\nTo export one of these tables, you can use “mysqldump”, like so:<\/p>\n
\nmysqldump -p garysielingcom wp_itsec_lockouts > wp_itsec_lockouts.sql\n<\/pre>\nWhen you inspect these, you’ll see that iThemes Security has a “create_database_tables” function that creates the above tables. However, it also shows that WordPress has settings that are tied to the site1<\/a><\/sup>, rather than the plugin. <\/p>\nThese are stored in “wp_options”:<\/p>\n
\nmysql> select * from wp_options limit 10;\n<\/pre>\n\n+-----------+--------------------+----------------------------------+----------+\n| option_id | option_name | option_value | autoload |\n+-----------+--------------------+----------------------------------+----------+\n| 3 | siteurl | https:\/\/www.garysieling.com\/blog | yes |\n| 4 | blogname | Gary Sieling | yes |\n| 5 | blogdescription | Philadelphia Software Developer | yes |\n| 6 | users_can_register | 0 | yes |\n| 7 | admin_email | gary@garysieling.com | yes |\n| 8 | start_of_week | 1 | yes |\n| 9 | use_balanceTags | 0 | yes |\n| 10 | use_smilies | 1 | yes |\n| 11 | require_name_email | 1 | yes |\n| 12 | comments_notify | 1 | yes |\n+-----------+--------------------+----------------------------------+----------+\n<\/pre>\nThe iThemes security values are a bit long, but you can see there are 17 of them:<\/p>\n
\n select count(*) from wp_options where option_name like 'itsec%';\n<\/pre>\n\n+----------+\n| count(*) |\n+----------+\n| 17 |\n+----------+\n<\/pre>\nYou can then use the mysqldump command above, but just exporting the relevant values from iThemes Security:<\/p>\n
\nmysqldump -p garysielingcom wp_options --where=\"option_name like 'itsec%'\" > wp_options.sql\n<\/pre>\nTo re-import these settings, you just need to run statements to delete the values you’re importing, then re-run the SQL scripts you’ve created. Deleting the values that match what you export allows you to simply re-import (i.e. there would be no issues merging values the plugin install code may have created if you’re migrating to another site).<\/p>\n