Projects Getting lost content back out of a broken WordPress site
Getting lost content back out of a broken WordPress site
Buffet Olives lost content in WordPress. I rebuilt it from the raw database into a usable archive.
- How long
- 2023
- My role
- Data RecoverySQL Extraction, HTML Export, Client Support
- Kind of project
- RescueSmall project
The problem.
Buffet Olives lost content in their WordPress installation: pages, PDFs, images and the metadata linking them together. The content still existed somewhere in the database, but nothing on the front end could show it.
What I did.
I extracted the raw SQL data directly from the damaged database, cleaned and organised it, and rebuilt it into two usable formats: an Excel sheet and a plain, offline-browsable HTML page linking back to the recovered PDFs and images. None of this touched their live production site.
What they got.
Their content back, in a form they can keep and refer to, without needing to log into WordPress at all.
For your technical person
Source was a legacy WordPress MySQL database. Recovery worked by direct SQL extraction from the damaged tables, followed by data normalisation and cleanup. Output was delivered as a formatted Excel sheet and a static, offline-browsable HTML page with attachment links, generated with a custom PHP script. All processing happened outside the production environment. 2023.
Related work.
Running into the same problem? Tell me about yours.
+27 87 150 9305Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 20:00 SAST. Or email info@antondevilliers.com.