Deploying Updated or New Plugins That Modify the wp_options Table

Not very well. There are issues with not only WordPress but plugins in general when moving databases on the fly, as for as I know, there is no seemless (or effortless) way to do this, it’s hacky at best, for that reason most people still use database dumps.

If you just care about preserving db urls, you can mimic the live url on your localhost machine using a vhost file.

If you want to preserve all data (id’s, content, and such) then you can sync the databases, just use precaution or a staging server as this can cause a disaster if a local change or mistake is made. This is not common because any local database stored changes will effect the live site’s database, so it’s really only good for altering code.

The alternatives would be a combination of the above with a server script that automates the migrations and sifts through the db, there are a few on github and elsewhere.

Some helpful links:

I also believe there are some 3rd party services (hosts) that now do this.

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