SiteOrigin Pagebuilder and widgets not working after site move / migration [solution]

Normally when moving, mirating or deploying a WordPress site, I use the Akeeba Backup plugin for WordPress. This works excellent, also for sites built using SiteOrigin Pagebuilder and SiteOrigin widgets bundle.

If, for some reason, it is not possible to use Akeeba Backup and a more traditional approach is used, like transferring the files using FTP, dumping the database to a SQL file, replacing the urls in the SQL file from the old url to the new, you will run into trouble if the old and new urls have different lengths (number of characters) because Pagebuilder uses something called serialization.

However, there is a solution:

1. Transfer all the site files using FTP to the new server
2. Edit wp-config.php on the new server regarding database host, database name, database username and database password
3. On the old server, use for example phpmyadmin to export the database to a SQL file
4. On the new server, import the SQL file using for example phpmyadmin
5. In phpmyadmin on the new server, go to the PREFIX_options table and find the key siteurl and update it to the new url (do not change anything else)
6. Log in to wp-admin on the new server and install the Better Search and Replace plugin (this one handles serialization)
7. Go to Tools -> Better Search & Replace
8. Enter your old url in the “Search for field” and the new url in the “Replace with” field
9. Click the “Run Search/Replace” button (this will simulate the search and replace process)
10. If everything looks normal and it reports there are a number of replacement possible, deselect “Run as dry run” and click the button again