Cannot connect to my blog or admin

musnake,

You are a genius!! I can now connect to https://www.tellmeaboutthat.com. It goes to the brand new blog page, so I’ll really be starting over. I had already posted 10 or more blogs on my old site. Additionally, I changed the theme and made some improvements. Not to mention the three unpublished posts that were there. I also used many of my blogs as articles that I published using Article Submitter and ArtimisLite. So the word is out there and right now the links are useless.

I have a file “backup-tellmeaboutthat.com-10-18-2008.tar”. It’s the backup that was created under cPanel at my old hosting site. How can I restore it and get the files into the right place? It has all of my previous contecnt including Feedburner links and comments.

Any suggestions?

GoDaddy created a database. I went to wp-config.php and changed the content to the DB_name, DB-user, DB_password that I used to get into the database files. Still nothing. I also tried to change the DB-Host to the server name given to me by GoDaddy. Still nothing. What about the directory or database that was being created while I was with my other hosting company? I’m assuming that changes were being made as I added posts and changed themes, etc. Does that have to be loaded into the files at GoDaddy?

project managment

Fisherama, is that you soccio97 or is this a new person?

@soccio97: When you add content to your blog, posts, plugin settngs etc. all of that get stored in the database. So, all that content is still in the database backup file from your old host. Do you have that file? It may be a .sql or .gz or something else. If you have that, we can work on restoring the db.

As far as your themes and plugins, they are in that .tar
Do you have a compression program on your PC that can open (untar) .tar files? If not, try 7-zip You create a folder anywhere, your desktop for e.g for you to work in. Drop the tar file into that new folder. Then you right click on the .tar and uncompress it right there. You’ll end up with a copy of the file structure of your old host in that folder.
Then, you browse through that old setup to the wp-content folder where you’ll see the plugins and uploads and themes folders. Those are the files to FTP over to the new site. There’s no need to push ALL the files as most of them are already there, you’re only missing the ones you added to the original (core) files from WP.

Right, once those files are on your new server, you’re ready to start messing with the database.

First, you must figure out how to generate a backup file of that database using your godaddy account. I’m sure you’ll figure it out (or google to see if someone has a write up). Choose “data” and “structure” so that you have the database tables (the structure) and the content in them (the hello world post, your initial settings etc). The reason we keep a copy of this cherry install is in case things go badly later, you can delete the structure and content (drop tables) without having to delete the whole freakin’ database (drop database). If you drop the database, you have to recreate it as you did earlier, and paste the values into wp-config.php etc. PITA.

If you get to this stage, where you have a database backup of the cherry install, and, you have found the sql file from your old host (remember that it might be compressed so don’t only look for .sql) you could try to restore your database using that sql file from the old host.

Now this is where we have to check something. When the old db backup was made, did it include just the content or the table structure and content? It changes what we do next…

Depending on the options used to create the backup, your new server may recognize that that file was intended for use on a database called something else (the old host db name) and it will throw all of it’s toys out of the pram’. No problem. You cleanup, you take out the broccoli, and you try it again. This is what I mean…
Cleanup: If your old file creates the tables (it’s not just content), you want to start with a database empty of tables otherwise when you try to restore using the old script it will complain that tables already exists and the crying starts all over again. So if your script creates the structure (the tables) you drop all the tables (NOT THE DATABASE!) and redo the restore from the sql file. If it does not create the tables, the script assumes that all the tables exist in the exact same structure as before AND that the tables are empty of old data! In this case, where your script does not create the db structure, you must empty (sometimes called truncate) all the tables, not delete them, empty them, ready for your script to fill…

Fine, so how to check? Open the sql file with an editor and look for CREATE statements (the create table statements). IF you see DROP IF EXISTS before the create you don’t even have to empty the db of the tables. The script will do that for you! IF you just see INSERT INTO statements then you know that the script is expecting the table structure to already be in place…

Sounds fussy but it’s not.
Put your themes and templates back into the cherry file install.
Check your SQL to see what it’s going to do (oh, delete any USE DATABASE statements you see as they’ll just complicate things, especially since the database it’s telling the script to use doesn’t exist anymore…)

It’s on of two things. Creates tables (so you must give it a database with zero tables, drop tables) or it expects tables (so you must give it tables that have zero content, empty tables).

Once it goes through the script and says 432432 rows processed 0 errors. Go to your site, hit refresh, and send me lots of money.

@fisherama: It’s not enough to create a database. You also need to install WP (you didn’t mention what you had already done)…

musnake,

I’m just soccio97. Fisherama is someone else needing help. The database I mentioned is actually “backup-tellmeaboutthat.com-10-18-2008.tar.gz”. I unzipped it. It was cretaed in cPanel using the Backup function. I forget exactly what it said and can’t check since I no longer have access to the cPanel. I do remember that it was for moving to a new server. That’s why I used it instead of the other options for backing up the aliases, filters and directories.

OK!! I unzipped the .tar file but do not see anything with a .sql or.gz extension in there. There are a lot of WordPress folders/files just like I recently installed and a lot of cPanel folders. I went through and didn’t see anything that looked like it may be what I’m looking for.

I did find something called “tinymce_6f12117b20d44f68758464584a39fdab.gz” it was under WP_Content/Uploads/js_cache. I also have Directory.sql but it’s only 2KB and was created in cPanel as a directory backup.

As far as the options used to create the DB I just clicked on a link and was given no options and it suddenly appeared in My Documents.

musnake,

Unfortunately I have a J-O-B and have to get some sleep. I managed to get in touch with my old hosting provider and asked for a copy of the DB. I don’t know what the response will be or if I’ll get one. I’ll check back tomorrow. Thanks for all your help and time. Thanks to you, I feel sure I’ll be back on track soon.

Hey soccio,

Yeah, I don’t think the backup-tellmeaboutthat.com-10-18-2008.tar.gz file has anything to do with the db. It’s the file structure of your entire account, not just the www stuff. It may have mail aliases etc. but I doubt it has the actual db backup files.

At least you have your themes and plugins back.

Hopefully your old host will come through.

musnake,

I’m back up and running. I made a deal with my old hosting company. They’ve hired some new folks and promised that customer service would improve. They took me back at a good monthly hosting price for unlimited domains and subdomains and I got 2 months free to boot.

I just wanted to thank you for all your help. You are a very patient person and I liked the way you attempted to lay it all out in terms even I could understand.

So check out https://www.tellmeaboutthat.com and sign up for the updates. I’ll be adding 85 sub domains and posting new artilces soon.

Thanks again.

You’re welcome.

I am dead-against the signal-clutter that aggregators add to the web, but it is a legal business money maker where copyrights are respected. Good luck?