Oooooo, @zestjosh - thanks for this! A new one to me. I’ll give it a go and report back
I had recently moved a Bricks to site from a staging domain to production, and ran into an issue where all background images weren’t loading at all in the various containers (but all other content seemed fine). I use a platform called Cloudron so my usual routine was a simple domain name change for the app which updates the URLs along with it, but I usually still need to go and use Better Find & Replace plugin to update the other URLs.
In my case, for some reason Better Find & Replace wasn’t finding them all this time (first time I’ve had that issue), and I had to go in and manually edit the database to update the URLs in all places. The WP CLI actually has a good find & replace functionality I wasn’t aware of before, so just used that I believe.
Once I did that, it was all good again. I could tell it was a URL thing because the background images were somehow still pointing to the old staging domain even while the site resided on the prod URL.
Not sure if that’s related in your case but figured I’d share my most recent experience.
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Hi @zestjosh - Quick update.
It was all very exciting when I found that Theme Switcha was broadly worked as promised - Ticking the ’ Apply switched theme to Admin Area’ option makes the Bricks menu appear, so you can import templates, etc.
Finally I thought, a fix for this months of trouble I had trying to get site I’ve developed on the Dev server in Bricks to work!
The major issue is that when I click ‘Edit with Bricks’ on the templates, Bricks doesn’t load, but instead the message “Invalid post type” is shown, so I’m not able to make any edits, or change conditions for showing templates.
Sadly back to the drawing board.
I really want Bricks to work, but f*** me, this really isn’t making it easy.
Separate Dev version
Going from the Dev server and trying to apply the Dev templates has exposed quite a few more issues. For example, the Bricks header template calls the menus defines on the server, but even if you have menus with the same name, they don’t appear as they have a different internal (Wordpress) reference number on each server.
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Hey @flimflam
I dont think you will find this ability in any page builder to be fair.
I think you need something more along the lines of versioning. Just had a quick google and this came up, but defo worth investigating this train of thought.
Try re-saving your permalinks after setting up theme switcha, hopefully that will solve the “invalid post type” issue.
If that doesn’t work, it might be worth trying another plugin like WP Theme Test instead of theme switcha.
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Hi flimflam,
sorry for the late reply, but I see I was very well represented 
In what form? If you buy a new car, you won’t jump from your old car to your new car while driving, but will probably (hopefully) park the old one beforehand 
Assuming you are 200% sure that everything is working fine, the downtime is maybe a few minutes, provided you know what you have to do after the change - and that certainly doesn’t end the world. Most likely, there will also be times when it is not so busy (at night, for example).
Right, that should solve the problem.
Hi @Michael
- Yes, so true (I’d acknowledged the same myself above - I know this is a long thread, so easy to have missed). I’ve had big headaches with trying to create a ‘version two’ of an Elementor site too - they all suffer from storing their info (layouts, config, etc) in wp_postmeta and wp_options.
It is slightly more complex with Bricks as it’s a theme, so until a theme switcher that only shows Bricks to Admins had been suggested, I’d be locked out from updating the live site.
Thanks for the pointer to VersionPress. It looks like it has a lot of potential. Not ready for me to use ATM, but I’ll keep a keen eye on it.
Currently, VersionPress is a Developer Preview and should not be used in production. We really mean it: any bugs or plugin incompatibilities might mess up your database.
As it’ll version the WP databases, this might be a big part of the solution for this issue with page builders.
Top tip @zestjosh - The old permalink shuffle did the trick!
Pleased to report I can now edit Bricks templates via Theme Switcha
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Oh dang, sorry bud, it was just a quick Google. and I had a quick look at what it did and thought this could be the thing you needed.
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I don’t think there is a good solution using Wordpress. It just isn’t designed to do this.
Personally I export all my data, then build the new site and then import the data again. It requires an outage but can be brief as you can test all the export/import steps in test.
Main issues arise if you have a forum, still possible but you do need to be careful to keep all the userids aligned with the topics/replies etc. I use WPImport/Export.
I’ve found I tend to do this even without a major design change as after a few years sites tend to accumulate loads of rubbish in the tables. Often from plugin upgrades that didn’t do a perfect job. A fresh start often improves performance remarkably.
I have a big change coming up - Elementor and its myriad of plugins, Ultimate Member moving to Bricks and PMP. Will be going with a fresh install of WP, adding plugins ( and licenses ) then importing data. Lots of testing still to do to prove this mind.
Cheers
Alan
All wise words @alanj - They’re appreciated.
I can see many advantages to the way you describe, indeed @timmse’s original post or two were along similar lines. In my investigations I’ve certainly found a ton of junk in tables.
The issue with this site is that it’s an active site, publishing about ten post a day and has lots of comments being added thought the day - hence wanting to find a way to transition over, as taking a site offline like that is far from ideal.
After a long period of looking for a solution, it’s looking like some offline time is unavoidable.
I’ve been surprised how the export/import of Bricks templates I’ve tried haven’t been as smooth as I expected/hoped. I’m trying to get to grips with what’s not gone right and will follow up with more detail once I get my head around it/fix it.
Oh Snap! I really must read the whole thread before commenting. Yes exactly what @timmse said.
Alan
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Hey @flimflam
Just another bit of scouting, but have you checked this out (again i just had a quick look) might be worth investigating?
Apologies if mentioned already