The next day we chatted for over an hour on Skype and the day after that we came to an agreement. Matt would start a work trial with Delicious Brains Inc. to see if he’s a fit for us and we’re a fit for him. If that works out, Delicious Brains would acquire BSR and Matt would become a full-time product developer on our team.

About a month later Matt went full-time, we signed some paperwork, wired some money, and it was a done deal. It was straightforward and very quick (probably because we kept lawyers out of it).

Why the acquisition?

Delicious Brains’ flagship product is WP Migrate DB Pro (MDB), a plugin that allows you to push and pull your database and Media Library files between installs of WordPress.

Although there was only a little feature overlap between MDB and BSR, their value proposition was essentially the same: save time migrating a WordPress database. And so it made sense to discuss an acquisition, to combine forces rather than compete. Also, we were hiring and had been planning to build BSR’s primary features into MDB for a long time (since before BSR was even conceived):

So who better to build those features into MDB than Matt, the author of BSR?

In fact, just today we released version 1.7 of MDB with a new in-place find & replace feature very similar to BSR’s. And for MDB 1.8, Matt will be working on an SQL import feature similar to BSR’s.

BSR’s Future

We plan to keep BSR around for as long as MDB. I like to think of BSR as MDB’s little brother product: not as powerful or convenient, but more affordable. I’d like to keep it that way. We aren’t planning to add any big shiny features to BSR in the short term. We’re focusing our efforts on consolidating the two codebases, adding BSR’s features to MDB.

Once we’ve done that, we will start releasing BSR as a build of MDB. We will run a script that assembles BSR from the shared codebase, only including the files necessary for BSR and excluding any files specific to MDB. For example, push/pull features and addons will be excluded. Because much of the code is shared, enhancements and bug fixes applied to MDB will automatically be included in BSR. It will still be called “Better Search Replace Pro” and have all the features it does now (actually it will have more since it will inherit some features from MDB — e.g. ability to exclude post types from search & replace). This means releases more often, quicker bug fixes, and more stability.

For now BSR will call bettersearchreplace.com home, but I could see moving it to deliciousbrains.com in the future so that it’s under the same umbrella as the rest of our products. This blog will only be used to cover BSR news. We’ll continue to write our award winning tutorials, op-ed, and other articles on the Delicious Brains blog. If you’re interested in that and would like to get an email from me once a week when an article goes live, you can subscribe to the email list.

20% Off WP Migrate DB Pro

If you’d like to give WP Migrate DB Pro a try, use the following link to get a 20% discount on your purchase:
https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/?coupon=hellobsr (expires Dec 31, 2016)

I haven’t mentioned our other product, WP Offload S3, but you can also get 20% off with the following link:
https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-offload-s3/?coupon=hellobsr (expires Dec 31, 2016)

Do you think this acquisition is a good thing? Do you have concerns? Either way, please let us know in the comments.

The post Better Search Replace Pro Acquired By Delicious Brains Inc appeared first on Better Search Replace.

Run a search/replace on a backup

You can now use BSR Pro to download a database backup with the URLs already replaced. This reduces the amount of steps needed to migrate a database- if WordPress isn’t already installed on the new server, you can just install that backup file manually via PHPMyAdmin or similar database tool and it will be ready to go.

Otherwise if WordPress is already on the new server, you can use BSR Pro to import that file without having to run a search/replace on the import.

Just like with imports, the search/replace will occur on temporary tables to make sure everything goes smoothly. I’ve tested this on sites with millions of rows in the database and it worked well.

Gzip Support

The other major feature that was added was Gzip support. This was a much-requested feature that greatly reduces file sizes for backups and imports.

Gzip is now enabled by default, although you can turn it off in the plugin settings screen if needed.

Installing the Update

You can install 1.3 by making sure that your license key is activated, then going to Dashboard -> Updates in your WordPress admin. If you need to purchase a license key, you can do so here.

The post BSR Pro 1.3 Now Available appeared first on Better Search Replace.

That said, it’s a good time to sum up some of the recent and future updates to the plugin.

Better Search Replace

The free plugin has seen incredible growth- adding at least 30,000 active installs since my last update in July.

Recently the plugin also gained several improvements in performance and reliability with the batch processing improvements that were added starting in version 1.2.

I still have more in mind for the plugin, and I’m currently looking into adding regex support to enable more powerful searches, and unit testing to ensure reliability and compatibility.

Better Search Replace Pro

The pro version also been well-received, which has helped to propel both the free and pro versions forward.

Since the 1.0 release, the Pro version also got batch processing for search/replaces, backups, and imports. That means that migrations should work well even on shared hosting.

I also decided to remove the ability to use the mysql/mysqldump binaries. This means that all backups/imports are done using WordPress native database functions, and is more aligned to the original intent of the plugin: no configuration, and everything done the “WordPress” way.

Finally, I’m working on some updates for the pro version. Look out for some new features in coming releases including the ability to run a search/replace profile on backups, as well as gzip support for smaller file sizes/faster uploads. It’s all very exciting!

Always looking for feedback

What do you think of the recent updates? Are there any other features that you’d like to see in the free or pro versions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Updates on Better Search Replace appeared first on Better Search Replace.

The plugin got pretty popular, getting over 10,000 active installs within just a few months. I want the plugin to succeed and be helpful for many more people in the future- so I created Better Search Replace Pro as a means of supporting the free plugin.

There are a few features that differentiate it from the free counterpart:

• The ability to backup and/or migrate a database with just a few clicks
• The ability to view exactly what changed during a search/replace
• Priority email support from me, the developer of the plugin

My goal with this is to make sure that the plugin has the resources to stay updated and live up to its name. I also want to make migrations as easy as possible- and I find myself using this tool frequently on sites that don’t necessarily need a full-blown deployment setup like Revisr.

Be on the lookout for further updates in this area in the coming weeks, and please don’t hesitate to reach out via email or the comments below if you have any questions or suggestions.

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