Website hosting help

[Percivellian]

I figured: "Hey, EN World is full of intelligent, helpful people with a wide knowledge base, it certainly can't hurt to seek aid here."

And so here I am. I'll outline the situation as clearly as I can, though please note that my technical savvy is limited to a single PHP class in high school, and what I've picked up through osmosis, basically.

A friend and I took over administration duties over at a discussion forum about a year ago. Since then, we've had some fairly significant problems with our server (the forum has actually been down for the last month and a half because of it) and we are looking to switch. This is where our problems/uncertainties begin to arise:

Neither of us has ever transferred a website to a different server before. Finding a spot to move to doesn't seem to be a huge issue, but what's involved in getting everything moved over entirely, and safely is a bit of a grey area to my friend, and completely unknown to myself.

We 'inherited' the site from previous owners/coders and we have had some issues with our code not being entirely up to date. I figure there's more than a few things we'll have to go in and tweak to make everything compatible, but getting a heads up as to what is needed to make a transition as smooth as possible would be greatly appreciated.

If you need more specific information, please email me: secondarytwo@hotmail.com

Basically, we're looking for as much of a guide to this process as possible, as it's difficult to train ourselves amidst busy lives/university schedules. Even some direction to some good educational resources would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

~Percy

 

[Plane Sailing]

Probably more likely to find the help you seek in this forum.

Cheers

 

[IronWolf]

Moving a discussion forum comes down to backing up the database and the files for the site itself and then restoring them on the new server. So being familiar with how to backup and restore databases will be helpful. You will want to read through some of the documentation for your particular DB server or use Google to find some how to's that might help you with this step.

You'll also want to backup all of the web files (php or static html files or others) for moving to a new server, this is to make sure you get copies of the files that may have been customized in the past.

Other issues that can come up are differences between versions of software. Depending on the message board software you are using, if it is a newer version on the new server your DB may be missing important schema updates to make it work with the new version of software. So some care will need to be taken here. It may mean installing the same version of software on the new server and then restoring your DB and *then* upgrading the whole thing to the version you want to be on.

It's also possible if your message boards aren't working now that the restores will still leave you with a broken message board, meaning you may have to get it working on the old host before moving it to a new host. This just depends on the actual cause of it not working on the old host.

Those are the very brief basics and some of the initial pitfalls you may encounter along the way. I would recommend not cancellig the old hosting contract until you are up and running on the new host. That way if you need to grab a custom file from the old place it will be readily available.

Good luck!

 

[Percivellian]

Thank you so much for the move, and the extremely useful reply. Man, this place impresses me on so many levels.

 

[Psionicist]

If the current website is PHP and MySQL I can recommend you "install" phpMyAdmin on the current server if it's not already available. It makes it very easy to backup the database. You can probably create a "SQL Dump". This will save everything from the DB to file so it can be imported somewhere else in the future.

The static files is the easy part, just download to your local computer and upload to the new server. Then import the database (with phpMyAdmin perhaps).

Version and settings problem between webserver software / database software / etc can be a problem. For example an extremely common PHP problem is how you get the variables from an URL, such as http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?[highlight]p=2571188[/highlight]#post2571188 sometimes $p works, sometimes you have to use $_GET['p'].

Other than small problems, moving a webpage should be fairly easy.

 

[Percivellian]

It is PHP and MySQL, and I am fairly certain the main issue is a versions one (aside from just plain old crappy communication between involved parties). Aside from the little difficulties, it is reassuring to know that the process if fairly simple (or at least hear it described as such). I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks again for being a wonderful resource.