One of my clients had an older FAQ plugin that had long since been abandoned. It had been acquired by another company, but development had effectively stopped. As time passed, it became increasingly incompatible with newer versions of WordPress and PHP.
The FAQ plugin itself was only part of the problem.
The website was still running on an older version of PHP because updating it would have caused critical errors in several areas of the site. Before any modernization could begin, it was important to preserve the existing FAQ content that the client had built over the years.
Fortunately, I had access to phpMyAdmin, which allowed me to inspect the plugin’s database tables. The questions and answers were still intact, making it possible to export the content rather than recreating everything by hand.
My overall strategy became:
- Back up the website.
- Export the FAQ data.
- Create a staging copy on another domain.
- Test PHP upgrades and replacement solutions without risking the live website.
- Reformat and import the FAQ content into a modern replacement.
Creating the staging environment proved invaluable. It allowed me to experiment freely with PHP updates, plugin replacements, and database imports while keeping the production website completely unaffected.
Lessons Learned
- Don’t rely on abandoned plugins for mission-critical content.
- Always create verified backups before making structural changes.
- Use a staging site for major upgrades.
- Preserve the data before replacing the software.
- Modernization is often as much about protecting existing work as adding new features.