Re: Don't know how to describe this anymore

Excellent post! I routinely "stage" Joomla! sites on subdomains, during development, then create a "fully hosted" domain.tld when ready to launch. I then delete the existing domain.tld directory (which was created by the Dreamhost Panel when I set-up the domain), rename the existing sub-domain.tld containing the development site to domain.tld, and make the configuration.php and .htaccess changes required. All done, and takes "no time at all". All that to say there are, obviously, "many ways to skin this kind of cat", and your suggested way works very well in many situations.

Given the way the original poster's situation evolved, his circumstances are a little more complicated (though the concepts still apply!). His problem is exacerbated by the difficulty of communicating how domains are "hosted", how DNS works, and how a Joomla site is structured in terms that are foreign to a new Joomla user not used to *nix hosting environments. That, no doubt complicated by my inability to explain things better,is probably why this thread became so "longish". It is really tempting to just offer precise technical answers, and leave it to the reader to decipher it all, but I really *do* want to help him get this sorted..

That is an excellent point, and generally I caution against users mucking about in the shell until they know a reasonable amount about what they are doing, so I want to make a little clarification here. The reasons I advocated the shell based "recursive copy" operation, in this instance, were as follows:

1) The use of "copy" (cp) as opposed to "move" (mv) is a "hedge" against "borking it up" - the worst that can happen is that you copy the files to the wrong place; the originals are still there so you can try again if need be (after, of course, deleting the files that ended up in the wrong place.) Backups are always a great idea, and there is a sort of "auto backup effect" when copying, as opposed to moving, since you still have the unaltered originals.

2) Exisiting permissions are preserved, which can be important.

3)Drag and Drop, or other ftp based "download/re-upload" methods are great - when they work properly. However, there are several threads on this forum where the ultimate cause of a failed upgrade, or transfer, of a largish application with many directories (and many more files!) has ultimately been determined to be due to having partially or improperly transferred files or directory structures. Sometimes this is because of the behavior of an FTP client, or other transfer failure (wrong mode setting, etc.) These failures/problems *can* be rather difficult to track down, and are even *harder* to identify if the application is a "monster" like Joomla! It also can "take a while", even on a broadband connection, and very nearly "forever" should a user be stuck on a dialup connection. Generally speaking, moving "big" things around on the server is more reliable than moving "big" things around via ftp (at least, in my experience).

4) Unfortunately, the "quick and easy" rename-the-diredctoy method won't work for this user's circumstances, given the directory structure into which he has already installed Joomla! You could "simulate" that process with a "mv" (move) operation, but if that gets done improperly, you might be driven to the Dreamhost ".snapshot" bakups (or your own) to recover

The google issues you describe will, eventually, "fix themselves", so I wouldn't worry too much about that as long as the site is "working".

As for the upgrade process, I completely agree that with basic shell skills, or good understanding of the directory structure of *nix and Joomla!, and a good ftp clilent, "manual" upgrades are pretty painless.

I never feel completely comfortable with "auto" upgrades (no disrespect to the Dreamhost "one-clicks" intended here!) as I don't really know exactly what they are going to do. Dreamhost even warns you about this when they make the "auto upgrades" as "Beta", and caution that you "may" have to reinstall certain features, templates, customizations or functions to a "one-click" upgraded application.

That is usually not too hard to do, if you understand the directiory structure and the structure of the application well enough, as Dreamhost leaves your existing installation available in the ".old" directory. You can go there and copy, move, drag-n-drop, ftp, etc. those files to your heart's content if you need to to recover stuff. The two problems with relying on that are that, you loose all sense of "version control" and will break the upgrade in you mishandle even a single file and, if you understand things well enough to attempt that, you could have more efficiently done the same thing with a "manual" upgrade . Of course, if you *don't* understand the directory structures and file functions of the application, it can be accordingly more difficult.

As you can pointed out, this thread has gotten rather "involved", and I think there is a lesson in that for any who might be following along: time spent in planning and learning *before* attempting to implement almost *anything* is generally time well spent. The original poster's struggle with all this would be considerably less difficult had he understood some of the things he is now learning (regarding DNS, directory structure, etc), and planned for what he wanted the end result to be earlier in the process before he fully developed his site.

Please understand, those comments are *not* meant to reflect negatively on the original poster; he researched what he wanted to do, dove right in, and got a functioning site, which is to be appreciated. We all have to learn somehow, and this process is sometimes "easy" and sometimes really "hard"

I really appreciate your post (and that you actually read through this thread), and I'm sure that the original poster is also appreciative of your efforts. *Please* continue to contribute to this thread, as I seem to not be doing a very good job of getting the original poster to where he wants to be and *you* may be able to explain things better than I can.

Imagine how happy he is going to be when it all "works"!

--rlparker