Sonic.net

From a quick look under the hood, it appears that the two wordpress installs you are working with (http://lee.users.sonic.net/wordpress/ and http://frederickweisel.com/) are using totally different wp-config.php files. They're using two separate MySQL databases, so they're going to display totally different content (unless the database itself were copied over).

The basic procedure is to change the URI stored in the database through the wp-admin web interface, then copy all the files lock, stock, and barrel over to the new location. This would include the wp-config.php file.

Right...that's where things went wrong, because the URI fields were grayed out. In trying to figure out why, I edited the php file in texteditor, then uploaded it to the frederickweisel.com directory. Any thoughts on why the options would be grayed out? And/or how to fix the config file?

Sorry if I'm being dense here...

One more thing...now when I go to the lee.users.sonic.net/wordpress site and I try to change the site address url (back to lee.users.sonic.net/wordpress) in the general settings, it doesn't update, but just puts frederickweisel.com in when I hit save.

lee wrote:One more thing...now when I go to the lee.users.sonic.net/wordpress site and I try to change the site address url (back to lee.users.sonic.net/wordpress) in the general settings, it doesn't update, but just puts frederickweisel.com in when I hit save.

I browsed to your website frederickweisel.com where it says database error. I remember my difficulty in the past where the URL settings from the old domain to the new have to be properly set. Have you access to your database via phpmyadmin?

In table wp_options, option ID 1, and also option ID 37 (page 2 maybe), your new website URL needs to be in both places.

Not sure this is the cure in your case, but of your config.php is set correctly, it may be those database settings.

Rgds, Ned

Thanks for your reply Ned. I've actually taken the whole site down and done a clean install of WP. Before I restore the site from my backup, should I NOT replace the wp-config.php, but use the one in the clean install?

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions, but how do I use the phpmyadmin that is available through sonic tools? I don't see it there in the menu.

Lee

lee wrote:Thanks for your reply Ned. I've actually taken the whole site down and done a clean install of WP. Before I restore the site from my backup, should I NOT replace the wp-config.php, but use the one in the clean install?

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions, but how do I use the phpmyadmin that is available through sonic tools? I don't see it there in the menu.

Lee

Hi Lee:

According to Sonic, if you indeed have a database set up, which you would need for WP, it is accessible via member tools. The site where I have WordPress set up is not Sonic, so I am working a bit blind.

One thing that will help you in the long run is to set up a local testing server on your "home" computer -- this is installed via XAMPP or MAMP (if Mac). You can take a downloaded backup of your old database and view or modify if you need on your local testing server. I say this, because in the experience I had changing hosts, the automatic WP database transfer mechanism crashed, and I was not able to change the database URL from the old site to the new. However, by manipulating the database on my localhost as I wrote above, create a backup with the new info, and upload THIS to the the awaiting clean database at Sonic, it solves a lot of potential problems. This also will allow you to debug your website before going live.

The WP Config should be modified to reflect the Sonic database info as you normally would do with a new WP site.

Hope this helps some...

Rgds, Ned

Hi Ned,
OK, here's where I am so far:
1. I backed up all of the wordpress files from my users.sonic.net/wordpress directory to my Mac
2. I installed MAMP and set up the database on localhost, port 3306, user: root, password: root
3. Set up my database name in MAMP
4. Copied and pasted my backup files into the htdocs/wordpress directory

When I went to localhost, I have a site there, but it's defaulting to a generic site.

5. I opened the wp-config.php file with textwrangler, changed the settings to
define('DB_NAME', 'databasename');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'root');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Then I opened Chrome, dumped my cache, reloaded the localhost site, but I'm still getting the generic site...none of the themes, plugins etc.

What am I missing?! I'm getting completely frustrated!! And I'm desperately hoping that I don't have to start from scratch on this.

If you're still following, thanks for the help!