philbertdog

I now see Download CSV on the List Participants page. I’ve downloaded the file, but don’t see how it preserves my data. Or maybe that’s not the intention of CSV?

In my case the CSV contains the title of each article and the record number, but none of the other data associated with the record.

Don’t really get what CSV is all about I guess…

Thanks for your constructive reply to my, um, whining. I’ve probably been spending too much time on my site and a break is likely the solution here. Getting a tad cranky apparently.

I don’t want to make any demands regarding free software, but if it interests you a video tutorial might help cranky people find their way through Google’s API interface.

I have a site about nuclear weapons activism, so your plugin is obviously very relevant to that. Thanks for making it available! I’ll cool off and try again in a bit.

Oops, the data is there, I just seemed to have killed the search feature somehow. At least I was right about being completely wrong…

False alarm, I found it. Sorry to bother you with this.

Ah, I see, thanks for that clarification. For now I guess I’ll just put the title in one field and the URL in another, that works well enough. Custom templates look interesting, I’ll check them out once I’ve mastered all the basics.

Perhaps they actually can export it for you, so it’s easy.

Good idea, it’s worth a try. So the entire mySQL database can be exported in to a single file, right? If I can get that file, I could hand it to new host so that all options would be preserved and reinstalled.

For what it’s worth, I did discuss transfers with them at length and in my innocence stated that the options are just data so there must be some way the entire transfer process could be made simple, easy and fully automated, just like the export process. They never got around to telling me that this was in fact the case, instead telling me I would have to manually reinstall all options if I moved.

The irony is that I never intended to move, I just wanted to learn how. And in the process of learning how, and what they weren’t telling me, now I want to move. Oh well, it’s the real world, I guess it’s not realistic that a host would teach me how to move.

The built-in exports only do content.

Yes, got this part. And thanks to you I now see that the easy simple transfer process that I’ve been searching for does exist, I just need to get in to an account that allows plugins to access it. I do appreciate you teaching me that because I was starting to question whether I even wanted to be using WP at all.

No, all that you mention is in the database, options table.

Thank you for this correction.

I thought premium accounts at .com could install plugins.

To my understanding, I’d have to upgrade for that. And upgrading would require paying a year in advance, $300.

If you can’t, then asking a hosting company to do won’t help much either.

I have a message in to a leading hosting company regarding transfers, will see what they say.

I can easily download the XML file and the images. That much works great. I can’t install plugins or access the mySQL database with a Premium account. All I’ve really got for transfers is their importer, which seems to suck.

I should add that I’ve actually been very happy with WP.com support, except for this one issue of transfers. They told me repeatedly a transfer would be easy and automated, and that’s just not proving to be the case.

I hope this explains why I’ve been attempting to learn how to do a transfer the manual hard way. It may be my only option.

Thanks again for your input, very helpful at the moment, and appreciated.

Hi again Joy,

When you use the XML export (and import), you only are working with content (stuff from the database). It does not contain all the options such as media sizes, widgets, which theme is active, which plugins are active, or any of the options for theme or plugins, or even the files for the images (only the meta data about the image).

I do understand that part, which is why I didn’t reply to your point.

I’m now at the stage of asking whether copying all folders/files over from one host to the next will successfully transport all customizations such as widgets, themes, menus etc.

Use a plugin for export, which will give you everything, including the ability to change the domain name. The plugin on the other end will load it all for you. And you don’t have to do all the manual labor.

Based on your advice I did research migration plugins, and they do seem the solution as you suggest. Regrettably, I’m currently in a Premium account on WP.com and so can’t use any of these tools, as I can’t install plugins. However once I make it to self hosting I am encouraged that any further moving seems like it will be pretty straightforward.

So perhaps I should choose a self hosting company, have them handle the migration out of WP.com, and then once I can install plugins I’ll be able to manage any further moves myself.

Thanks for your assistance!

My understanding so far is that if I move a WP site I will have to reinstall all widgets and menus from scratch. Probably other stuff too. Can this possibly be true?

Or is this only true if I am moving from WP.com to self hosting?

Once I’m self hosted are all widgets and menus etc automatically set up on the new site just by moving all folders/files over to the new host?

Thanks much for any thoughts!

Hi Joy, thanks much for your response. If your time permits…

So for the folder/files I can just FTP them from one server to another, with possibly an edit to the .htaccess file. Yes?

but after a move, permalinks do need to be saved to generate the rewrite rules.

I don’t understand this. Is this related to folders and files, or is this a database operation?

So to do a complete job of moving a site, it’s easiest to use a migration plugin, especially if you are changing the domain name in the move. The plugin will do a search/replace for you in all the database tables for the name change.

Yes, this makes sense, but I can’t get it to work. The WP importer consistently fails. I also tried the Auto Upload Images Plug-in which seemed to work well at first, but then it started generating Internal Server Errors so I couldn’t finish the job. The problem with both of them may be that they are trying to move images from one host to another, and time outs may be killing the process.

Thus I’ve wondered if it would be possible to FTP both the XML file and the images to the new host, and then run some script to fill the database. Does anybody do this?

But if you want to do it manually, you would use phpMyAdmin to export the database to SQL file, carefully make any name changes in the SQL file (options may have string lengths), then import that (in phpMyAdmin) on the new site.

Ok, thank you, yes, I probably need to learn this.

The current issue is that I’m at WP.com and they put all the images in their domain (even though I’m a paying customer) so if I were to move I’d have to change the URL of every image in the database. Auto Upload Images Plug-in seems to do this, but it keeps crashing.

To keep things tidy, another subject in next post….

Aha, yes, that sounds right. Good idea, I’ll try it, thanks!

Malcolm, thanks much for your response.

I’ve been building sites for 25 years, but am new to WP. As part of the transition I’m trying to learn how to move WP from one host to another. Moving the text is easy, and I get I’m going to have manually reinstall widgets and menus etc. Images are the problem.

If your time permits, a couple of questions..

1) Should the WP importer be grabbing the images from the old host, or from my computer, and uploading them to the new host? I do have images backed up on my computer, but see no way to upload them via the WP dashboard.

2) Should the WP importer be editing the HTML of all pages to change the image URLs so they point to an image storage location on the new host?

I’m trying to understand whether the WP importer should normally be expected to perform these jobs. Or, is it my job to upload images via FTP and then do a find/replace as you suggest? What procedures do people normally use when moving a WP site from one host to another?

Part of my confusion is that two hosts have told me repeatedly that transferring a site is easy and automated. This seems true of text, but not of images, best I can tell so far.

Thanks again for any advice!