changing host guidance

[seanspeng]

Hi Pekka, Welcome back from your trip!

I am planning to change my web hosting company. Could you please give a guidance on the procedures that we should follow to ensure a successul transfer of EE?

My current understanding:
1. download all copies of the files that are currently on my account, and upload them to new hosting account.

2. Do a full backup of EE:

SELECT "Do backup from source db to both target db and file
DOWNLOAD the file, and restore the file in new hosting account into EE?

I've never done this. Any detailed instruction would be greatly appreciated!

[Pekka]

seanspeng wrote:
Hi Pekka, Welcome back from your trip!

I am planning to change my web hosting company. Could you please give a guidance on the procedures that we should follow to ensure a successul transfer of EE?

My current understanding:
1. download all copies of the files that are currently on my account, and upload them to new hosting account.

2. Do a full backup of EE:

SELECT "Do backup from source db to both target db and file
DOWNLOAD the file, and restore the file in new hosting account into EE?


Yes that's basically it. Upload files, set passwords (they can be different in new server), restore database. If you want to use copy utility, you'll need also to chmod thumb and microthumb directories to 777.

PS. Before you do it wait a day or so as I'll post a new version of EE Backup which fixes a nasty bug (related to PHP command thread order when it writes lines to disk), which can happen in some very fast Linux machines.

[seanspeng]

After I uploaded all the files to new host, how do I set it up/install? Do I follow the orginal instruction for 1.22? then 1.22to1.3 instruction? Now it becomes complicated for me. I'd really appreciate your detailed instruction.

Please let me the steps. do I go to the setup first? or do I go to backup first, or exhibition_eidtor.php?

I cannot get it work.

[Pekka]

The setup scripts set up the database for EE. When you move an EE installation to another server you should NOT run any setups in new server as the restore database already contains the correct database setup.

EE consists from two parts:
- EE files (folders, html, php, photos, thumbs)
- EE database

1. copy files from old to new server (keep the directory structure same i.e.

OLD SERVER:
http://www.oldsite.com/gallery/
NEW SERVER
http://www.newsite.com/gallery/

BUT, if you change new site to

http://www.newsite.com/newgallery/

you have to change all paths in path editor after database restore to reflect this change.

2. restore database from file backup done in old server:
in new server change password and database to match, upload the file backup using EE Backup, select it for file list and press restore.

3. set EE's connect.php's password and database to mach new server.

Thats it. No other steps are needed.

[seanspeng]

Pekka wrote:
The setup scripts set up the database for EE. When you move an EE installation to another server you should NOT run any setups in new server as the restore database already contains the correct database setup.

Ohoh! After spending many hours, I could not access the exhibition_editor.php page from new host, so I ran the setup from 1.22, which enabled me to get into the editor interface with a lot of script errors message written here and there. After restore the old database, the errors went away.

Pekka, what will happen if I ran setup by accident in this case? Will it reverse something? or do I need to run update from 1.22 to 1.3? It is working fine though, look at here: http://pengs.us/gallery/



3. set EE's connect.php's password and database to mach new server.
Thats it. No other steps are needed.


We need one more step. This one killed most of my time trying to locate the "couldn't connect to db" message when trying access backup page.

Besides update database info in add/connect.php, you also need to do the same in backup/ee_backup_prefs.php.

You know what problem I ran into? I also changed my domain name a while ago without update this backup_prefs.php, everything seems to work in the surface, but everytime I backup the mysql, it was backup the old database from the old (parked) domain. In other words, I have two EE mysql under both parked domain and main domain. So today I found the backuped file from yesterday restores data a month ago!!

SUGGESTION: Is it possible to modify ee_backup_prefs.php so that there is only one file (add/connect.php) contains the database username and password info?

Thanks!