Migration to DreamPress Failed. Data lost?

wordpress
#1

I upgraded my account to DreamPress for one of my domains, and in doing so found that the migration completely broke the web site. I did expect that I may have to reinstall plug-ins, as the documentation suggested was likely, but I have absolutely no access to my admin panel, nor does any of my content seem to be intact.

  1. Has the integrity of my initial database been preserved, or have I actually lost all of my posts, settings and other data?

  2. Do I need to point back to the old database, or create a new one and start from scratch?

  3. How can I tell if any of the original infrastructure was ported over?

Staring at the errors I’m getting is a little scary. It looks like I’m back at square one, which is a little daunting.

Thanks a bunch for any assistance folks might provide with getting me going in the right direction here.

Susan.

#2

Before anyone asks “Why does it fail!?!” sometimes plugins cause conflicts with the tool we use to migrate :confused: We’re upgrading the tool to be able to ignore the plugins.

Now answers!

  1. Preserved! NOTHING was deleted yet. It’s 60 or 90 days before we do that (in case you change your mind it’s a faster roll back).

  2. You can copy the DB over (or ask us to manually copy the DB over in a ticket).

  3. You’d have to use FTP, but usually that part of the copy (which is just an rsync really) is the easiest part.

#3

Thanks a bunch, Ipstenu-DH, especially for such a quick reply.

I’m taking a look at this now to see if I can figure out how to disable the plug-ins through the backdoor to see if that brings it back up. I’m assuming the best place to start is with the wp-config.php file to make sure they’re not loading, correct?

Thanks again, very much!
Susan.
[hr]
I sort of have a general notion of where this is failing.

First of all the wp-config.php file was pointing to the OLD server and username, whereas the update had tacked the numeral 1 onto the end of each. I corrected this manually. Now I am seeing very explicit errors, that give me another clue of where this is tripping.

The original installation was set up at the following URL:

http://estrogenarmy.com/blog

The new one appears to simply be:

The errors being thrown are by include attempts that are looking for plug-ins and other assets at the old /blog space. On looking at the wp-settings.php file that one of the errors is pointing to, nothing seems amiss. I’m unclear as to which file is still holding onto this old path suffix. Is this being stored in the db itself perhaps?

#4

Yeah, changing the wp-config comes AFTER we copy over. And the 1? Is what you’re supposed to have :slight_smile: That’s the new server on DreamPress.

And the domain being wrong (that is, with the folder) makes sense since that too is done via a WP command. BUT…

admin.php is NOT a normal WP file. You (or someone) edited the index.php because you were using WP in a subfolder. DreamPress runs everything out of root. I swapped the index.php file with the index.php_Standard one, turned off your caching plugin, changed the DB BACK to the -1 (which is correct for DreamPress, I know it’s weird), and now your site is loading. Of course, all your URLs are sans /blog/ so … this may not be what you expected.

I went back to your old server (mangano) and looked at your setup there. Strictly speaking, DreamPress is for WordPress only. Right now we’re not going to stop you if you copy over the old files. And if you wanted to move the WP instance back into a blog folder nor would we stop you from doing all those fancy things again. But it takes you outside the ‘norm’ of a WordPress setup, and puts a hell of a load on TS because now if you ever have any issues, we have to learn what you did to make WP special (a custom index.php etc) before we can fix it.

If you’re okay with JUST WordPress, then I think the only thing missing is your images folder, which I don’t see on DreamPress (which makes sense - we copy over your wp-content folder, the .htaccess, and wp-config.php, not the rest, and WP is a fresh install).

#5

I spent a handful of hours going through things last night with tech support. Was that you? I have to tell you, I’m absolutely gobsmacked at the amazing customer service I constantly get from your team, year after year. You earn every single penny a customer invests in you, and then some.

Thank you so much for everything you have done. This is actually part of a new business launch for me, so it’s personal. I am very, very grateful for all the help!

Much gratitude and respect,
Susan.

#6

I should have addressed this in my previous reply. Thanks a bunch for clarifying this! I won’t be copying any of the other folders and data over from the old server because most of it was Joomla test installs. I ended up settling on WordPress, and was so much happier with the way things worked and the power of the plug-ins that I decided to upgrade to DreamPress, so I’ll be leaving it as it is now.

Having it in the root of the domain is fine, except that I have not been able to find a way to hide it from the public. It won’t be launched until later in April, but I don’t seem to be able to find anything on the dashboard that lets me turn the visibility off just yet. With the old site I had a place holder, and while I could do this by replacing index.php, it would end up killing testing functionality.

#7

I use this plugin: http://wordpress.org/plugins/underconstruction/

It lets me approve my own IP address so I can always see the site and mess with it as logged in AND logged out, but no one else can see it.

#8

Thanks a bunch for this plug-in. It’s exactly what I needed.

And thank you so very much for all of the help you’ve been in getting the site operational again. I cannot believe how well it works on DreamPress! It was a nightmare trying to get it launched with just the basic hosting, which of course really was never intended to support something like I’m trying to do in the first place. While it’s early days, I’m hopeful. I can already see huge advantages to having made the switch.

Much, much gratitude …
Susan.