What happens to a WooPayments account during a site migration?

During the lifetime of your business, you may migrate your site between hosts or servers. You may also move your site between a staging environment to production multiple times. If a site is migrated while using WooPayments, this could activate Safe Mode or it could result in the WooPayments account not carrying over to the newly migrated site.

This guide provides details about how WooPayments handles site migrations so that you can avoid any disruptions during site migrations.

Site identification

↑ Back to top

When you first start using WooPayments, your site:

• Connects to our payment servers.
• Is assigned a unique identification number.

This identification number is what a WooPayments account is assigned to, and this connection is what allows you to manage your WooPayments account in your site’s admin dashboard.

Due to this identification number system, one of two things will happen when a migration occurs:

1. If a site migrates and retains this identification number, then Safe Mode will activate.
2. If a site migrates without retaining this identification number, then the newly migrated site will not have access to the WooPayments account.

Moving your WooPayments account information post-migration

↑ Back to top

Once a site migration is completed, you may want to move your WooPayments account and its associated information — including transactions, deposits, and disputes — to the newly migrated site.

Accomplishing this is different depending on whether or not Safe Mode was activated as a result of the migration.

Migrations that activate Safe Mode

↑ Back to top

Safe mode primarily activates when cloning a site from production to staging or vice versa. It is designed to prevent payments from being interrupted when our system determines that a WooPayments account is connected to two sites at once.

We don’t recommend leaving Safe Mode active, as it can cause issues. You can read more about how to resolve the Safe Mode notice here.

Migrations that do not activate Safe Mode

↑ Back to top

If you finish a site migration and Safe Mode is not triggered, then this means that your WooPayments account is not connected to the newly migrated site. This could be because the new site:

1. Is not connected to our payment servers.
2. Has connected to our payment servers, but the site has been assigned a new identification number.

In this instance, we recommend that you contact our support team so that we can assist you.