Sidewaysgravity Blog

This past weekend I had the joy of moving two different installations of wordpress to a new server. The first one, which is this blog, moved from my old godaddy.com hosting account to a mediatemple grid server. The second blog (thebaileyblog) which my wife and I use, moved from a subdomain of sidewaysgravity.com to its own domain.

When moving a wordpress blog from one location to another there are a couple steps you will need to take to make sure that everything continues to work. Wether you are moving a blog to a new server with the same domain name or a new one, the steps stay the same, with only a few extra steps if the domain name is changed.

There are a couple things that you will need when you are preparing to move your blog. You will need an ftp program to be able to retrieve files from your current host and to put them onto the new server. It is also extremely useful to have access to phpMyAdmin and since that is what I used, I will use directions for it. If you are not sure how to access phpMyAdmin, you can contact your hosting company and they can help answer any questions you may have. For Mac users, CyberDuck is a great ftp application.

One thing I cant stress enough is to BACKUP you wordpress blog. I have moved my handfull of blogs and everynow and then something happens and I would be in a world of hurt if I didnt have my backup. You will want to backup not only your database, but also all the files for the blog. Fortunately when you are moving the database between servers, you have to back up the files to do the transfer anyways so you dont have to spend any extra time for the backups. Just dont delete your files until you are completely done and fully tested.

The first step is to login to the existing server with your ftp client and download all your files. I like to create a folder on my desktop and load all the blog files into it. Once you have downloaded all your files, depending on the size of your blog and number of photos this could take a while, you will want to login to your database to backup the rest of the blog. You will need to choose your database and select the export option. From there you can export the entire database as an sql file and save it. This is all you should need to do to backup all of your current blog.

Now to loading your blog onto the new server. First you will need to setup your new database. Make sure you write down your connection information such as your database name, user name and password. Some hosting also gives a specific connection address to databases such as godaddy and mediatemple (gs). Once you finish setting it up you will want to login to phpMyAdmin. Here you have two options, once is to copy and paste the entire sql file that you backed up previously into the sql page (there should be a sql tab). The other option is to select the import function and to import the file. I find that copying and pasting the sql file seems to work the best.

The following step should only need to be done ONLY if you are moving your blog to a NEW domain such as www.myoldblog.com to www.mynewblog.com or if you are changing subdomains. If you are only changing your server but maintaining the same domain name, you can skip these steps and procede to upload your files via ftp.

Anytime you add a photo to your blog, wordpress will store the address to the file with an absolute url, which means once you remove the files off your old server, all those images will no longer work in your new blog. There are also a couple other settings where wordpress stores the blog url and it will need to be changed. The first time I transfered a blog, I went through the database and changed out the urls one post at a time. Since then I have learned a better way. While logged into your database, open the sql statement window and use the following code to update find and replace every instance of the old blog url and change it to the new.

This code will update the site url and home page that is set for your blog. This must be set to the new blog domain for your wordpress to work.

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.oldblogdomain.com', 'http://www.newblogdomain.com');

Next, you will want to update all the image or any file paths that you have added to your blog.

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.oldblogdomain.com','http://www.newblogdomain.com');

Finally, the following code can update any links within your blog posts that may point to another area of your site. You may or may not want to update this code. Although I dont use many internal links, I still run this just incase I have one or two.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.oldblogdomain.com', 'http://www.newblogdomain.com');

Finally as a note, their is one other area where data from your old server is stored. In the wp_postmeta table and meta_value field, the actual server path to images and files is stored. Even though your server path will most likely change when you move to a new server, you do NOT need to update this code. This is one area that can cause all of your images to display at full size and not as a thumbnail as intended. Unfortunately I found this out the hard way. Many wasted hours. I still do not fully understand the reasoning behind this, but I know that your blog images will display properly if you dont mess with these fields.

Finally you are ready to upload the files you downloaded to your destop onto the new server. Before you do this, you will need to open up the wp-config.php file and add your new database information. Once the upload is completed you should be ready to go! If you have troubles along the way or if you know why you cant change the absolute paths held in the meta_value field I would love to know why.

Tweet This Post

Reading around today I saw that the long anticipated playstation network game “flower” is set to release this Thursday with the normal weekly update of the Playstation Store. (2-12-09). This is another one of the inexpensive (cheap) games you can purchase on the playstation store. The price should only be $9.99 US. There have been several reviews of the game and most of them have all been great. It might just be that quick game you will need to play inbetween breaks of Killzone 2 which is set to realase later this month.

Tweet This Post

The other day I was asked to help a friend of a friend to format and reinstall windows onto their desktop machine. I normally dont like doing it unless it is my computer since I dont know what files they want to keep and which ones they dont. So my rule of thumb is to always have them move any and all files they want to keep onto their desktop, that way if they loose a file during the format, then its not my fault.

While copying over some files onto my usb thumb drive, I noticed that it was getting close to its capacity (2gb) eventhough I really had just a bit more than 300 mb stored on the drive. Somewhere along the line I was loosing 1.5 gb of data storage with no rhyme or reason. I thought that it might be a mac/pc thing, since I primarily use my usb drive with my Macbook. So I plugged in the drive to my mac, lo and behold, I was still missing the 1.5 gb of space.

To make the blog post not any longer than it needs to be, I beleive the difference comes with how files are marked for deletion on a Mac. A while ago I noticed that after deleting several gigabytes of data from my MacBook, the space was not free’d up until I emptied my trash can. That makes enough sense. While “deleteing” a file really just marks it for deletion in the trash can, it still leaves the file their until it is actually deleted from the trash can. What I did not realize is that on my mac, it does the same thing with my thumb drive. Any time I delete a file from it, it only “marks” it for deletion but leaves the file on the drive.

The solution is simple, plug in your usb drive, open your trash can and empty the trash. My usb has an led light for activity so I could see that it was being accessed to delete files, and after it finished… presto, my full 2gb was available.

I am pretty sure this process is done differently on Windows computers, but I am not sure how. I believe that when you delete a file in Windows, the file itself is physically moved to a deletion area, where as on the mac it is only marked for deletion and is no longer visible. But I am not expert on this so if something is not right, please correct me.

Tweet This Post

Over the weekend our printer once again ran out of black ink… A common occurance since my wife and I are still in school. About a six months ago we decided to give the ink refills a try and bought a kit ($14). We previously had bought new cartridges and had two black ink cartridges at empty at home. One cartridge we have already refilled two or three times without incident while the second cartridge just sat around being empty.

A couple weeks ago we ran out of ink yet again and my wife decided to be brave and refill the cartridge herself. She did a great job, but the cartridge didnt work. When I got home I checked the fill level, tried cleaning the head, but after several tries I could not get it working. So I decided to try my luck with the second cartridge… which had been sitting around (without ink) for about 6 months. After filling the cartridge (following the instructions) and cleaning the print head, to my amazement… it didnt work. I tried a couple tricks, setting the head on a papertown that has been dabbed with rubbing alcohol, which helps to loosen any hardened ink in the print head. After both cartridges sat for over an hour I gave them a try, and still didnt work.

To get the ink flowing you will need to clean the top of the cartridge with alcohol and made sure there is no ink on the top of the cartrige. Very carefully and while holding the cartridge level with a paper towl on the print head you will need to create a seal over the opening where you fill the cartridge with your mouth and create a fairly strong air pressure to help push the ink through the print head. Be very careful not to inhale any ink or get any on your skin as it will stain and could be toxic. This trick worked like a charm for both cartridges, and now I have two topped off cartridges which have many more uses in them.

Tweet This Post