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Moving Wordpress To A Different Domain

No, I’m not moving, not yet anyway. But Lava is. She scored a domain name which describes her blog so perfectly, that she couldn’t help but nab it up: HowISaveMoney.net. Now what are the odds that this domain would still be lying around?

Lava finally made the big step and “moved into her own place“. Moving domains is always such a hassle, but there are a few things that make the process a little bit easier. I was the Administrator during this move and I must say it was a little bit involved, but I think I got it done.

The Domain

The domain was purchase at 1and1.com. Why not NetSolutions, Yahoo, GoDaddy? Because they all have great promotional deals but then it’s upward of $8 to renew every year. 1and1 has a nice flat rate of $5.99 every year.

The host remained the same, since this particular hosts allows up to 10 domains pointing to it. All the files are simply dumped in a different sub folder. I both love and hate the idea of one consolidated host. It’s easier to manage: one login one set of administration and maintenance, cheaper than several different hosts. But if one sight goes down, they all go down. If a hacker gets into one, he damn well gets into all of them. The load on all of the sites is still very small and way under the allotted bandwidth limit. Most of them are blogs using Wordpress and we all know what a small physical footprint Wordpress leaves behind. If any one site seems to out grow things little family what it turns 18 or something, it will definitely be kicked out of the nest onto it’s on hosting package.

Copy Files

Now this should be the simple part. You copy everything into the folder that is going to house your new blog. There are a few minor changes that you might need to make. Depending on your previous setup you may need to edit the .htaccess file and change the RewriteBase option. But I do think that Wordpress will configure it for you when you set up your permalink stuff.

One change that is necessary is editing your wp_config.php file. If you’re changing databases, you need to make the changes here. If you’re not changing databases you still need to make the changes to the table prefix. I forgot to mention that we still need to keep the old database active (details to come later).

Posted in Blog, MySQL, PHP.

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23 comments

By Kevin Lloyd – April 2, 2007

Importing Large MySQL Databases – When phpMyAdmin Let’s You Down – Get BigDump

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a beautiful tool. It let’s you administer a MySQL Database without all the messy commands. Also, some host don’t even allow you access to those messy commands. So, once again, it’s a beautiful tool. You can pull up a window and run individual SQL commands on the database or you can run an entire SQL script. It’s really great. There is a wonderful export tool that allows you to back up your Database as plain text SQL file or a file in GZip format. I have seen exported files get up to 10 MB compressed, which is over 100 MB decompressed, given that it’s just a plain text file.

Importing MySQL Database

But one thing that is lacking is a proper import procedure. Currently, you can import a database by pasting the SQL statements in a form and clicking submit, or by uploading an SQL file through your browser. Now that’s all well and good, but there are some problems with this method. The main problem is with timeouts. Of these there are two kinds, there are browser timeouts and server timeouts. The second problem is file size. Another limit, which you don’t often read about, is the phpMyAdmin configuration limit.

Browser TimeOuts

Browsers have a limited time that they can be busy waiting for response from the server and when doing a database import this is exactly what is happening. Your browser does a little work of uploading the file. After that it’s up to the server. So while your browser says it’s busy it really isn’t. It’s just waiting for the PHP script (phpMyAdmin) to get back to it and say it’s done. With large databases, this can take a time.

There are a couple ways to get around this. In Firefox you can go to about:config and look for the setting that deals with the browser timeouts. Honestly, I even forget what the exact property is. If you use Internet Explorer (well maybe you need to be punished) you’re out of luck, because as far as I know (which is not much about IE) I think you need to go into registry to do this. If you’re browser times out, it simply stops and kills the connection. With no active connection there script on the server comes to a halt.

Server PHP Script TimeOuts

Now let’s say you’ve gotten over the problem of the browser timeout. Good for you. Now you’re hit with something you may not have control over. A lot of shared hosts don’t allow you to modify their PHP configuration settings, for good reason. And a lot of servers have very fixed limits on the length of time that a script can run for. If this is less than what you’re file needs to run, then you’re once again out of luck. There is no work around for this though, sorry.

File Size Limit

Servers have a fixed limit with respect of the size of file that can be uploaded through the browser. Back in the day, it was stuck at 2 MB. Right now, I’ve seen them maxing out at about 8 MB on average. So what do you do if your export file is 10.5 MB? You’re out of luck, that’s what. Now why don’t they modify their export utility to break files up into multiple sizes that can be handled through import? well, it’s too much work. It’s not their problem, get a better server I guess. Once again, you’re out of luck.

phpMyAdmin Limit

phpMyAdmin has a limit in their configuration file that limits the actual number of SQL commands that can be executed. It’s that simply. If your database goes beyond this, then once again, you’re out of luck.

Well not really. You could install your own version of phpMyAdmin on the server and configure it as you like. If this works for you, great. But if your problem is also one of those mentioned above, then again, you’re out of luck.

What Are Your Options?

Posted in MySQL, PHP.

4 comments

By Kevin Lloyd – April 1, 2007

Very Fancy Menus – CSS And JavaScript

Saw this and I was amazed:

fancy_menu.gif

All done with CSS And JavaScript. The implementation is also brilliantly simple. And it all fits in 1.5KB. What’s to lose?

By the way, you can’t tell by the image, but the image under that travel menu; it moves with the mouse hover. Check it out: Facny Menu.

Posted in CSS, JavaScript.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 31, 2007

JavaScript Only Links, Why? Someone Tell Me Why, Please

Why We Might Need (Want) JavaScript Links

Recently I stumbled upon a site that I haven’t been to for a while: CSOWeb.org. The design is nice and clean: a header image, with some gradients and colors that work together. But wait, where are all the links? 95% of the links on the sites are http://csoweb.org/#. What the hell? Everything is done behind the scenes in JavaScript in OnClick() scripts.

Sometime later I read a post on the Future of the Web about JavaScript only links. The first comment on the page is usually everyone’ argument for these links.”But…but…what about GMail, and Google Web Toolkit?!?!?”. Good argument, I guess. Everyone loves Google and everyone tries to emulate them. There’s no problem in that as long as we understand what’s going on. Magic word: AJAX. AJAX makes heavy use of JavaScript for obvious reasons. If we’re populating a page from a database using AJAX, then JavaScript is the only option. This leads us into the discussion of appropriate uses of Ajax. Don’t take me back there man.

Posted in Ajax, JavaScript.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 31, 2007

Websites on Wide Screen – How The Other Half Lives

Back last year I posted about Fixed vs. Fluid Layouts and Screen Resolutions. I made reference to a friend of mine that I went to and saw how my site looks on his LCD Monitor. That was just a couple few hours, one experience. Everywhere else I go I encounter only 17″ monitors, CRT or LCD. So that 800 pixel limit for sites seems to work out just fine.

Now I finally got the parts for my new computer last week. One of the new things I’ve gotten is a 19″ wide screen LCD monitor. Now, one thing learned about LCDs is that LCD monitors don’t look good in any other resolution except the one they are designed for. Mine is 1440 x 900. Now I’m not complaining. I love this monitor. Everything is so beautiful and crisp. The only thing that could make this better is if I had two of them side by side.

Posted in General.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 28, 2007

Got My New PC

Today is one of the happiest days of my life. I finally got my new computer. Here is a quick break down of the specifications:

Now I would love to tell you guys to look forward to a lot of new posts, but honestly I’m going to be wrapped up in this for a while. I got a lot of new games to play and a lot of movies to watch on my wide screen monitor :) . So, I’ll be with you guys in a couple days, lol.

Just kidding. I haven’t been able to post lately because I sold my old computer and I didn’t want to risk blogging at work. But it’s all good now. I’m back.

Posted in About Me.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 23, 2007

How Do I Pick An AJAX Framework And Why Should I Care

This may be one of the most difficult things to consider when starting up with AJAX. There are a lot of AJAX Tutorials out there that give you good background information. And it’s good to know what’s going on behind the scenes, it really is, but let’s face it if you’re going create anything worthwhile with AJAX, it makes no scene to do it from scratch. As a developer, I’m a big fan of frameworks. If you think it about it enough, everything is a framework for something. I suppose that if you have a couple hours (days depending on your skill level) you could write a very functional console application that emulates a basic calculator in sssembly code. Or, you could fire notepad, write a quick C++ application in about 5 minutes and compile and you’re fine.

In the same respect, you could use C++ and create a very graphical Windows application or you could use C# and the .NET Framework and fire one out in minutes. Why should web development be any different? Frameworks are there for a reason. A team usually develops a Framework over a long period. They get all the kinks out and they make it available for you guys to use. If a bug is found, they do a fix and put out a new version. You simply replace the files that you use.

Posted in Ajax, PHP.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 20, 2007

No Computer No Posts

I know a lot of you might be wondering what’s going on, but once again we’re gonna have to take a short break. I recently sold off my old computer so right now I’m paying for internet access and I don’t have a computer. OK, I’m not a total idiot. I did make a purchase recently. I ordered a bunch of computer parts, since I’m building the new one. Here’s the problem. Like an idiot, I forgot to get a heat sink and a fan for my CPU. So I’m waiting for these to arrive in the mail. It should be some time next week though. But this is where I am. The only other place I have internet access is of course at work, but seeing as I just started this job, I’m not trying to get yelled at so soon. So I guess it’s see you guys next week.

Posted in About Me, Work.

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By Kevin Lloyd – March 16, 2007