I try to totally remove Podcasting Plugin by TSG since it generated thousand of useless lines in its settings and in my blog home page.
But if deleting its files is not enough since all settings are stored in wordpress database options table.
Mu question is: how could I delete all these settings in order to start from scratch a new installation?
Thanks.
You need to go into the database directly.
If you're using a MySQL administration tool (e.g. phpmyadmin), go there, search for the settings that it has changed (e.g. if the plugin changed a the web address for the site, you can manually change it back to what you want).
If you don't happen to know exactly what it changed, since it may be difficult to exactly know, if you have saved a previous version of the MySQL database, you could start over and import the old .sql file that you have saved.
Related
My site is messed up and I am trying to fix it, and regardless of it I get help, it is going to take awhile likely, and it's really important that my site be live, even if it's a crappy version with just the articles and no template.
Would it not work to make a backup of the database, install Joomla fresh (the same version) and connect it to that duplicate database (then point my domain there) and then go back to working on fixing the current site that is live now? Are there any issues I should know about going in? There's a good chance the issues are related to the template or extensions (at least my understanding so far, see my other post for details on the issue) so I would think it would be faster to do this to get a working site rather than trying to turn off and on each extension, especially when I have to do it manually (and I don't know how yet) as I can't access the backend.
If this will work, do I choose the database when I install or just install empty and then change what database it connects to or do i install empty and import the tables (and how)? Still have to figure out if I can make a clone of the database and not all the files as it takes hours.
Thanks for the help, and if I should have appended this to the other post I apologize, but I figured its a separate issue.
First, ensure you have backups of both the files and the database. Then make a local copy of your site where you will work later.
The infection may lie:
in the Joomla core files, with extra content (which is usually fairly easy to spot, for example an eval of a large base64-encoded variable);
in extra files (keep in mind that even images could contain malicious code), these would be usually triggered outside of Joomla for spamming or other nefarious purposes
in the database content.
Fix:
Apply a fresh Joomla update package over your site; you will only fix n.1 above. This may restore some functionality for the first hour of survival.
Analyse the logs, and try to figure out how they got in. You need to step up security as obviously what you have is not enough.
Install a fresh Joomla, add all extensions that your site uses, copy the images folder, then connect it to a copy of the compromised database. This will fix n.1 and 2 above (as you got rid of any extra files). This may survive until they figure out you fixed it; but if you haven't patched your security, they will hack into your site again. Keep a copy of this, and restore as needed as you proceed with the following step.
Export the db to sql format (mysqldump or phpmyadmin may come in handy), then search for any xss traces, php code, javascripts that may have been injected. Since a complete control could take days, and assuming the malicious code links elsewhere, look for strings such as "https://" and "http://"; escape / as \/ and \\\/ to account for json-encoded data as well.
Once the db is clean, your local copy is reasonably safe; update all extensions and Joomla, and use it to restore the website until you fix your security.
It might work, i mean cloning the DB as far as joomla version is the same. It won't break like that, but may fail if files for extensions are not found. This is somewhat wrong, the question is how many extensions you are using and how much cleansing you need.
On the other side you mention that the site should be 'live'. Just do everything on localhost, test, fix templates, etc. Then if you're sure you're done, use akeeba backup and deploy new version to your server without long delays.
Any kind of cleansing needs some start.
You can clean the site while live, depends on complexity.
Clean might be done offline and deployed.
Sometimes import/export custom routines are needed, so you have to make own tools for everything. It occurs with large data, like when people used to made mess inside images folder or something like that.
4 ...
It's pointless to make copies of DB. You install the same version of Joomla on your local server, then you install the same template, you copy styles etc.
Then you import data with your own tools or paid ones. Estimated time is from few hours to few days, it's just data :)
I'm trying to migrate a WordPress site to some new hosting. The site is an older site, created probably 7+ years ago. I'm getting an error from wordpress upon bringing it to the new server that gave me a heads-up that the WP tables have no prefix. Sure enough, I login to Phpmyadmin, and there are no prefixes on the tables. I have since tried several methods to add prefixes and get the site migrated, but all are coming up short:
Direct DB dump from phpmyadmin on old server, import into new server. Triggers "tables have no prefix" error
Use updraft plus to get the backup from old server, restore to new server (triggers "tables have no prefix" fatal error)
Revised #1(above) approach - db dump/import/restore, manually add (via operations tab in each table) wp_ prefix to all tables. Site loads, but logging in as admin then yields no access to wp-admin dashboard (black bar at top after login, but no options for doing anything on the dashboard). I have tried the various tricks suggested, like adding a new temp admin user or trying to make necessary changes in usermeta table to my admin user, but that doesn't resolve it.
Tried using the All In One WP Security plugin to add new prefix. It recognizes the current no prefix, but won't successfully complete adding the prefixes to the DB. Tried another plugin and didn't even get that far.
Using Phpmyadmin, I've tried to use the built-in add prefix, and that seems to not work either.
I just looked at phpmyadmin again after trying unsuccessfully to use the built-in add prefix function, and am noticing that while all tables are InnoDB, the collation is a mix of utf8_general_ci and utf8mb4_unicode_ci . I understand that the second option is probably what I want all of them to be. I was able to add prefixes to the tables that are utf8mb4_unicode_ci, but the rest of them simply do not respond to that function in phpmyadmin.
The next thing I tried was to change all the collation to utf8mb4_unicode_ci using phpmyadmin. I used the "change all tables collations" and "change all tables columns collations". That seemed to work and then allowed me to add a prefix. However, after that, while the site was still working, I could again no longer get into the wp-admin dashboard. If I were to try the same conversion but only doing the "change all tables collations" and skipping the second option, I wonder if that might work. Just tried converting the tables without converting all the columns. The site seems to still work ok after doing that. But trying again to add prefix using the AIO WP security plugin still doesn't complete.
It would seem that adding the prefix is causing the issue. Is this something that a theme could be interfering with for some reason? What am I missing here?
Any tips for moving forward with this site? Thanks so much.
You can simply dump the database, open it with a text editor, replace all occurrences of "CREATE TABLE " with "CREATE TABLE yourprefix_" and restore the database.
It should be easy, depending on the size of the dump.
I have looked through the answers and I am not sure which will work for me , so I am writing the question again, Hoping for a response that might work.
Here : http://norstore-trd-bio0.hpc.ntnu.no/tfcp/
I have a database on server and I am using Joomla to create the website and manage database.
This was a test version, now I want to have the database here it self but use the new URL for website http://tfcheckpoint.org/ bought by godaddy.com.
According to godaddy i tried to first mask the website that is kinda a redirect tfcheckpoint.org to orginal site as explained here:
http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/422/forwarding-or-masking-your-domain-name
BUT, this cause some links to be broken and not accessible anymore, since the external URL is fixed.
Secondly I looked for other solutions and tried to get the mysql dump and replace the old url with new url everywhere and imported the sql file again, but nothing changed. probably because the new site is masked and I have to unmask it. Or should I install Joomla again and start from scratch with the new URL.
But is there a proper way to do this. I don't think moving the database to new hosting server is the solution as many people have their data on local servers while they use these fancy domain names.
Please guide me if there is a standard procedure to do so.
As far as I can tell from your question, you are merely trying to move a Joomla site from one hoster's server to another? You may even be moving between hosters...my answer still stands.
Firstly I have heard of many issues with GoDaddy for Joomla sites. But that is probably an answer for a different question.
In terms of moving your test site and "turning" it into a live site on a new server, this can be done with a 3rd party tool like Akeeba Backup.
For Joomla's settings in the new location, you will need to change the details to accommodate the new hoster's details for database and file locations. This is done through the Site Restoration process(made very easy in Akeeba). There is also a setting for LiveSite that you have have set which would need to be changed manually in /newlocation ofyour files/joomla install/configuration.php.
In terms of DNS settings, your new domain should point to the new hoster's server and a 301 redirect against the old domain pointing to the new one should cover all the bases.
I hope that answers your question. If not, I suggest rewriting the question to be more clear. You will probably get more answers
I am in the process of writing an offline-capable smartclient that will have syncing capability back to the main backend when a connection can be made. As a side note, I considered the Microsoft Sync Framework but since I'm really only going one-way I didn't feel it would buy me enough to justify it.
The question I have is related to SQLite vs. SQLCE and ClickOnce deployments. I've dealt with SQLite before (impressive little tool) and I've dealt with ClickOnce, but never together. If I setup an installer for my app via ClickOnce, how do I ensure during upgrades the local database doesn't get wiped out? Is it possible to upgrade the database (table structure, etc. if necessary) as part of the installer? Or is it better to use SQLCE for something like this? I definitely don't want to go the route of installing SQL Express or anything as the overhead would be far too high for what I am doing.
I can't speak about SQLLite, having never deployed it, but I do have some info about SQLCE.
First, you don't have to deploy it as a prerequisite. You can just include the dll's in your project. You can check this article which explains how. This gives you finite control over what version is being used, and you don't have to deal with installing it per se.
Second, I don't recommend that you deploy the database as a data file and let ClickOnce manage it. When you change that file, ClickOnce will publish it again and put it in the data directory. Then it will take the previous one and put it in the \pre subfolder, and if you have no code to handle that, your user will lose his data. So if you open the database file to look at the table structure, you might be unpleasantly surprised to get a phone call from your user about the data being gone.
If you need to retain the data between updates, I recommend you move the database to the [LocalApplicationData] folder the first time the application runs, and reference it there. Then if you need to do any updates to the structure, you can do them programmatically and control when they happen. This article explains how to do this and why.
The other advantage to putting the data in LocalApplicationData is that if the user has a problem and has to uninstall and reinstall the application, his data is retained.
Regardless of the embedded database you choose your database file (.sqlite or .sdf) will be a part of your project so you will be able to use "Build Action" and "Copy to Output Directory" properties of that file to control what happens with the file during the install/update.
If you choose "Do not copy" it will not copy the database file and if you choose "Copy if newer" it will only copy if you have a new version of your database file.
You will need to experiment a little but by using these two properties you can have full control of how and when your database file is deployed/updated...
I've looked around the Wordpress forums about this and didn't find anything so I thought I might try here.
If you have a staging/dev Wordpress setup used for testing new pluging and such, how do you go about migrating the data in the staging database back to the production database? Is there a "Wordpress best practices" way to do this, or am I limited to having to manually migrate tables from one database to the other?
I have a script that mysqldumps a copy of my production Wordpress DB, restores it over my test Wordpress install & then corrects all the "production" settings & urls in the test DB.
Both my production & test databases live on the same server, but you could change the mysqldump settings to dump from a remote mysql server & restore to a local server quite easily.
Here are my scripts:
overwrite_test.coach_db_with_coache_db.sh
#!/bin/bash
dbUser="co*******"
dbPassword="*****"
dbSource="coach_production"
dbDest="coach_test"
tmpDumpFile="/tmp/$dbSource.sql"
mysqldump --add-drop-table --extended-insert --user=$dbUser --password=$dbPassword --routines --result-file=$tmpDumpFile $dbSource
mysql --user=$dbUser --password=$dbPassword $dbDest < $tmpDumpFile
mysql --user=$dbUser --password=$dbPassword $dbDest < /AdminScripts/change_coach_to_test.coach.sql
change_coach_to_test.coach.sql
-- Change all db references from #oldDomain to #newDomain
SET #oldDomain = 'coach.co.za';
SET #newDomain = 'test.coach.co.za';
SET #testUsersPassword = 'password';
UPDATE `wp_1_options` SET `option_value` = REPLACE(`option_value`,#oldDomain,#newDomain) WHERE `option_name` IN ('siteurl','home','fileupload_url');
UPDATE `wp_1_posts` SET `post_content` = REPLACE(`post_content`,#oldDomain,#newDomain);
UPDATE `wp_1_posts` SET `guid` = REPLACE(`guid`,#oldDomain,#newDomain);
UPDATE `wp_blogs` SET `domain` = #newDomain WHERE `domain` = #oldDomain;
UPDATE `wp_users` SET `user_pass` = MD5( #testUsersPassword );
-- Only valid for main wpmu site
UPDATE `wp_site` SET `domain` = #newDomain WHERE `domain` = #oldDomain;
Perhaps you are just looking for the wrong thing. Wouldn't a backup plugin handle this with ease? I know they exist for all the big CMS packages...
The two methods would be using the export/import feature under tools or copying the database. I email myself a copy of my production database weekly using the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
The import feature can be problematic for moving a wordpress blog as you have to configure your php.ini file often because the default value of files you can upload on a hosted php implementation tends to be too small by default.
I wanted to pull the database from my production wordpress website into an offline development copy of it on my desktop machine so I could modify the site and test it with a
full set of the existing blog content and history.
This proved to be problematic, as simply making an offline backup of the database and importing it into the local development database did not work.
Overcoming these problems in moving data from the production to the dev database can probably be used to go the other way as well - so I think you can just use these guidelines for what you want to do as well - just start with dev data and move it to prod.
The problems here were:
the permalink designations for the
blog posts are all stored in the
database as they would be for the
online version, but my offline copy
isn't at the domain address, instead
it is in the localhost directory. So
when I launch the site locally,
although the css formatting and
images are all in place (the image
links being relative), the actual
blog posts don't show up.
many of the links throughout the
site link back out to the internet,
so if you try to navigate to
archives, or comments, or
categories, or the main posts, you
get sent back out to the internet
instead of staying in the database
on the local machine.
To make sure I was doing this right, I blew away the wordpress install I had on my local machine and restarted from scratch.
Once I had a clean, new wordpress install and brand new default freshly created local database for it, I opened up the database in phpMyAdmin and took a look at the wp_posts
table. Inside there, each record (in other words, each post) has a column titled "guid", which shows the location of that post. For example, the first one in a fresh, default
install contains this "guid" value:
http://localhost/wordpress/?p=1
If you look in the wp_posts table of your online version, you'll see instead in this location the url to your site online.
You can't just import the tables wholesale into your local install, because you'll be importing all these outside references. It will make your local version impossible to navigate locally.
So, I created a backup copy of my online site's database and saved it locally as a .sql file. I then opened that file in a text editor (I used notepad++, a great piece of free software, but you could use any text editor). Things I needed to look out for:
For whatever reason, the tables on my
online site aren't just, for example,
"wp_posts" - they are
"wp_something_posts"... there are
some extra letters in there in the
table names.
Any references to http://... that contain my online url instead of localhost/wordpress
To keep it simple let's just do only the posts. In the backup copy of the .sql you've made of your online database, find the beginning of the wp_posts table. It will look something like this:
--
-- Table structure for table `wp_posts`
--
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `wp_posts`;
CREATE TABLE `wp_posts` (
...and so on. Highlight everything above that up to just below the comment marking the beginning of the database at the top of the file (it will say -- Database: 'your database name') and delete it. Then go to the end of your wp_posts table, and delete everything after then end of it down to the bottom of the file. Now your file only contains your posts, and nothing else.
Save this as a separate document. Call it posts.sql or something like that.
Now, in this posts.sql file, you need to do two find/replaces actions.
Find every instance of the name of
the table wp_something_posts and
replace it with wp_posts. You only
need to do this if your backup copy
of your online database doesn't
match your clean local install as
far as the table names go. You want
whatever the table name is in this
file to match what your locally
installed wordpress database has as
this table name. If you don't make
these names match, you are just
going to end up importing the posts
into a new, differently named table,
which will be of no use to you at
all.
Find every instance of http://...
(replace the elipsis with your url)
and replace it with
http://localhost/wordpress (or
whatever the local url to your dev
version of the site is)
Now save this file again, to make sure you've got these changes set.
Now that you've done that, use phpMyAdmin to get into the wordpress database on your local machine, select the "import" tab and navigate the selector to the posts.sql file you just made, and then import it. This will pull all the data in that file into your local wp_posts table.
When that finishes, browse your local wordpress site. You'll see all your posts in there now. Hooray!
You may need to do something similar for a few other tables if you want to bring in your comments, tags, categories, and static pages you've created, etc.
I realize this is a convoluted process. There is probably a tool out there somewhere that makes this activity easier, and if someone knows of one I'd love to find out about it. If someone knows of a better way to do this manually than what I've described, I'd love to know that as well!
Until then, this is the way I figured out how to do it. Hopefully it helps get you going in the right direction.
You need to handle the serialized objects. Here is a client side HTML5 utility to handle it. Because it is all javascript, it's quite fast.
The alternative would be hooking a bash script into your deployment. So once the site is deployed, the db is backed up and deserialized with the new domain.
This about sums up the problems with the wordpress core architecture... but I wrote a plugin that solves the problems with domain names and absolute urls being stored in the database:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/root-relative-urls/
This will solve the problems outlined by #oddbill. Though don't worry too much about the url being in the GUID column as that field is never used for link generation.
#markratledge provides a couple links to some lengthy documents that basically say this:
//export
mysqldump -u[username] -p[password] [database] > backup.sql
//import
mysql -u[username] -p[password] [database] < backup.sql
You'll want to exclude the comments/comments_meta tables if you push to production from staging so you don't lose all of your comments and trackbacks (#DavidLaing's approach will wipe those out.) And this assumes you only make content changes in your staging environment. If you want to make changes in production and your staging environment, you'll need to write scripts that sync the data instead of wholesale overwrite it... good luck on that task, may I suggest adding create & modified timestamp columns before you invest too much time with the current schema.
And finally, #RussellStuever's approach is suitable in most circumstances, just be sure to know when you are browsing your host mapped site versus your production site. And really be sure about it, because some browsers cache dns lookups for days until you physically close them and start a new process. At which point switching hosts may take some time, and switching frequently may get frustrating. And if you need to test with an iPhone, you'll need to publish the site live first, or use a good router that can remap outbound internet requests to local servers because you cannot modify hosts files on most mobile devices.
My plugin lets you develop and test from http://localhost/ or http://staging.server.local/ or http://www.production.com without any of the usual pitfalls. And then to migrate data, it's as simple as exporting and importing the data, no search & replace step or database setting tweaks necessary.
And don't rely on the import/export tool, it doesn't capture everything in typical wordpress installations, and still requires a needless search & replace step.