Reinstall using old database

  • OK; I’ve had a good search through the codex and these forums, and can’t see anything that matches my exact problem, although I have some vague ideas from topics related.

    Basically, my site is (or rather was) hosted on a friend’s server, which recently suffered a catastrophic hard-disk failure. He, bless his heart (he does the hosting for free), has managed to rescue my database, but not the files from my domain. (Yes, I know a proper ISP would have had backups and redundancy, but I don’t have that sort of money!)

    So, what I want to do once the server is back up online (early next week, fingers crossed), is reinstall wordpress and have it use the old database, so I don’t lose all my previous data. Questions I have are as follows:

    1)Is this even vaguely possible?

    2)If yes, how should I go about it? (Other related topics seem to suggest I may want to use the ‘upgrade’ option rather than ‘install’, but I’m no coder/elite WP user, and could well be wrong on that.)

    3)If not, are there any work-arounds I could consider (eg, creating a fresh install *and* a fresh database, then importing the data from the old database somehow)?

    Any advice on how to deal with this situation greatly appreciated, so I can be ready to get myself up and running as soon as my buddy’s systems and connection are back to normal.

    PS: I know you’re all thinking ‘shoulda taken backups/got a proper host/etc’, and I know where you’re coming from; the simple fact of the matter is I can’t afford to pay for hosting, and hence I took the risk of something like this happening. I know I’m a n00b and an amateur, but life’s a learning curve, eh? ??

    Thanks for your time, people.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • what i would do is install the same version you used be4 (wordpress 1.x or 2.x) then in mysql admin area , restore the database you have (even if u have 2 drop the new database) .

    And be sure that your blog link – url is correct .

    it should be fine .

    made it few time allready .

    Thread Starter armchairanarchist

    (@armchairanarchist)

    Thankyou chaaban! Just to clarify and make sure I understand;

    You are saying I should:

    1) reinstall to a fresh, empty database in the same directory position as my previous installation, and then…
    2) restore the old database over the top of the fresh one, making sure the URL settings in the admin panel match the ones I had before.

    [When you say I may have to ‘drop the new database’, I assume this to mean I’ll have to delete it *before* restoring the old one with the same database name.]

    If I’ve understood you correctly, thankyou very much indeed! If I’m missing the point, please correct my errors if you have the chance. Thanks again…

    This tutorial may be of some help as well
    https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/restore/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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