So I shut off the ability for just “anyone” to be able to register for membership. I noticed a lot of the email addresses that were used for registration ended in .ru, and I would be shocked if I was that popular in Russia. I have no idea what shenanigans a person can get up to be being a subscriber to a blog, but I’m having none of it.
If you really wanted to be subscribed to my blog, and I just dropped you like a Russian spammer, I apologize. Leave a comment and I’ll set it up.
Today I’m annoyed at WordPress. For my day job I had been developing a WordPress site for a client, but we didn’t have access to the final hosting spot so it was set up at a testing location. The client finally wanted it moved to his real server, and I tried. Lord I tried. I thought it would be as simple as just moving the files with an ftp program to the new location. Oh no. Not so. Not at all so. It also doesn’t help that the final host is very security conscious and the account I was given to log in with doesn’t have permission to add a database.
Shit’s all fucked up now.
Apparently not knowing jack about PHP, MySQL, and that other programmy hoodoo has finally caught up with me. “Dammit Jim! I’m a graphic designer, not a web jockey!”
*sigh*
Hopefully our service provider will be able to restore the database that I tore to shreds, burned the pieces of and then pissed on, so at least the site will be functional once again at the test location. Otherwise…
On the bright side, I’m learning from my mistakes at an awesome rate. By the time this is all done I might actually know what I’m doing.
If its not too late now, here’s something you can try.
FIrst of,f go into the dashboard, and under settings, there is an option to export. Export the blog. Save it to your hard drive.
If there are images/vids/etc in it, go to the uploads folder in the installation and download it as well.
Now go to the new location, create the database (sorry can;t make that easier on you) and create a new blog. Import the blog you exported earlier.
I *think* but am not sure, you should just be able to upload the media content back into the new uploads folder and be done with it.
I’ve never been able to get the hang of backing up and recreating databases and the like.
Hope that helps a little.
Debra: I’ve tried that before, and it’s good for saving the posts, but it didn’t save the site layout or the template modifications.
If our host can restore the crap I messed up, and the client’s host is unable to get it to work with what I sent them, then I’m going to see if they’ll do a WP install with their own database, and I’ll go on from there. If I have to rebuild it, as long as the original site is accessible, I know I can.
Ideally, in the future, I hope we can work from the beginning of the project at the location where the site will remain. That, or I hope I can learn how to do a transfer correctly.
Can’t you just re-download the theme files from the existing site? That’s what I’ve done when I’ve had customized themes and needed to move an install to somewhere else.
Either way, sounds like you’ve got a headache to deal with. I’m glad its not me! The worst I’ve had to deal with was having a client change the domain that was pointing to her WP install, so I had to go into the database directly and change the URL everywhere it showed up to the new one… an easy fix, but I had to figure out how to do it first.
The problem wasn’t the theme files, it was the database. I was able to get the theme working fine, but without the pages that were built I was hosed. Luckily after about half the day I got it straightened out. The final problem I was having was with permalinks. Default setting was working, but any other setting and all pages except the main one returned a 404 error. Turned out to be an issue with the permission settings on an invisible file in the root folder.
So it’s all good now, but at one point yesterday neither the test site nor the final site were working and I wasn’t sure I properly backed up the database. I thought I was hosed and was going to need to rebuild from scratch.
Like you said, an easy fix once you know what needs to be fixed. Now I think I could do it again in half the time
but I probably won’t need to for a few months, by which time I’ll have forgotten everything.
Glad you got it straightened out finally. I recently wanted to change my permalinks to “pretty” ones but even modding that invisible file in the root folder didn’t do it, so I gave up. It was just an idle idea anyway, but one day I’m going to sort it out.