Help Moving Site Please!

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-17 17:35:39

Hello everybody,

I’m not very good at any of this deep technical stuff when it comes to moving a site and unfortunately I’m not in a position to hire anyone to do it for me so I’ve been struggling with this stuff with the aid of the technical support people at the new host. With a little bit of luck I’ve been able to get the textpattern pages to open for my site, but I still haven’t been able to get the site work – I keep getting the dreaded 404 files not found error. When I open the diagnostics page at my textpattern pages I get the following error messages and not only don’t I know how to fix them, I’ve no idea what they mean.

I’ve already set the php.config file for the site to access the database, have an htaccess file in the right folder with the information in it that I was told to put in it by the question market beside the error message in place, but still can’t get the damn thing to work.

Here’s the error messages I’m receiving on the diagnostics page

$path_to_site is inaccessible.: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine ?
/home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/index.php is inaccessible ?
Image directory is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine//home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/image
File directory path is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/index.php
Temporary directory path is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/textpattern/tmp ?
.htaccess file is missing ?
Clean URL test failed. ?

If anybody can offer any help – as in telling me exactly what I need to do in very simple language – I don’t speak tech at all. I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you very much

Richard Marcus

Dragondz · 2011-12-17 17:47:57

Hi Rachard

Moving a site need to adjust some variables especially path to site!

There is a documentation on the wiki about this task Moving Installation from one Host to Another

The path to site is set in /textpattern.config.php file that you need to be adjusted to your new host (ask your host if you dont know it)
I think if this one is corrected a lot of error message will disapear.

Another error message is about missing htaccess file (you must had one from your old install, but if you dont download textpattern zip source you will have one), the htaccess is necessary to have clean url working, but you can work on messy url if you havent htaccess (go to admin/preference to change that).

If you havent understund something or need more information repost a message.

Cheers.

els · 2011-12-17 18:05:12

Dragondz wrote:

Moving Installation from one Host to Another

Some of the instructions there are DreamHost specific. If it’s not clear enough for you how to apply it to your situation, just let us know. Looking at the errors I don’t think you need to do a lot of things to make the site work.

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-17 21:02:53

Hello and thank you for your help.

Of course, I now have questions for you – Which htacess file should I be using as there seem to be four of them in my files, one is empty and two of them refer to my web site’s address, epicindia.com and contain the following:

#DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

#Options +FollowSymLinks
#Options -Indexes

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
	RewriteEngine On
	RewriteBase /~epicindi/epicindia.com/magazine/

	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
	RewriteRule ^(.+) - [PT,L]

	RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php
</IfModule>

#php_value register_globals 0

while another contains the above without a specific reference to my site’s address.

I did look through the instructions for moving a site, and while there were somethings that I didn’t understand completely or that didn’t appear related to my site, it does appear that I’ve set up the config. php correctly (I had two one under textpattern and one under textpattern 404 – which is the one I need for my system) as I went through them with the tech support person. The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether or not I needed a table prefix. The other thing I wasn’t sure of was whether I needed to change both config.php and config-dist.php or only one of them? I’m also not sure if I have the “full server path” thing right. That’s the address I’d need to get from the tech support right at my new server right?

Thanks very much again. I hope you can help answer these questions. You people are such a big help.

(added bc.. for better code display. -Els)

Last edited by els (2011-12-17 22:40:39)

els · 2011-12-17 23:19:39

$path_to_site is inaccessible.: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine ?

It looks like you installed Txp in the directory /magazine/, right? ~~One way to find the right value for path_to_site is to create a file named phpinfo.php with this content:~~

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

~~and upload it to the root of your site. Then visit epicindia.com/phpinfo.php, scroll down to ‘Apache Environment’ and look for DOCUMENT_ROOT.~~ Oh forget this, you should be able to find it in Diagnostics, anyway.

Let’s say it’s /path/to/yoursite. Add /magazine/textpattern at the end, so /path/to/yoursite/magazine/textpattern is what should go in config.php for $txpcfg['txpath']
This will probably get rid of more than one error.

Image directory is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine//home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/image

In the Textpattern back-end, go to Admin > Preferences > Advanced: for ‘Images directory’ it should just be images (without the path).

File directory path is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/index.php

In Admin > Preferences > Advanced change ‘File directory path’ to /path/to/yoursite/magazine/files.

Temporary directory path is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/textpattern/tmp ?

And while you are there, change ‘Temporary directory path’ to /path/to/yoursite/magazine/textpattern/tmp.

In .htaccess (the one in /magazine/) you may need to comment out (add a # in front of) this line:

RewriteBase /~epicindi/epicindia.com/magazine/

config-dist.php is not used, it’s just the model for config.php.

You only need to enter a table prefix in config.php if you gave it a prefix when you installed Textpattern. If you can access the back-end, and see the site’s content, the database related values in config.php are correct.

Let’s see what diagnostics say after you’ve done this.

Last edited by els (2011-12-17 23:25:14)

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-18 12:21:47

Hi Els,

Thanks for the help – this is going to sound like a stupid question but I need things spelt out for me – How do I figure out the Path to my site? Right now what it says where you suggest that goes is the following /home2/epicindi/public_html/epicindia.com/magazine/textpattern The folders for the site are at public_html/magazine/textpattern in the file manager of my server which makes me wonder if I should drop the epicindia.com and the path should be /home2/epicindi/public_html/magazine/textpattern? If you could let me know that would be great, or if I should double check that with my new host.

I’ve made the other changes you suggested with the image file and the htacess files as well – don’t want to make any others until I have confirmation of the path name. Thanks

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-18 14:00:37

Hi again Els,

Well I tried doing what you suggested using /home2/epicindi/public_html/magazine/textpattern as the path to my site at $txpcfg[‘txpath’ and then using its appropriate form -path/to your site/magazine/files and magazine/textpattern/tmp at the files and temporary files area in Textpattern’s back end Preferences/advanced – looking at your instructions I now wonder if I only needed to add on “files” at the end of the address or should I have added on /magazine/files and /magazine/textpattern/tmp to the path. In other words should it read/home2/epicindi/public_html/magazine/textpattern/magazine/files?

Right now at the diagnostic page I’m still receiving the following error messages

$path_to_site is inaccessible.: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine ?
/home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/index.php is inaccessible ?
Image directory is not writable: /home/www/epicindia.com/magazine/images ?
.htaccess file is missing ?
Clean URL test failed.

I can open the back end no problem and am able to access everything here – including all the content – but none of it shows up at the sites web address. I’m obviously still doing something wrong – not understanding the instructions you’re giving me or something. When I look at the diagnostics section it lists two paths for the site one is $path_to_site: home/www/epicindia.com/magazine and the second is a duplicate of what’s listed above and I couldn’t tell you which one you’re referring to when you talk about the path to the site. Sorry to be so lame.

To sum up: I made the changes you suggested in the htaccess file, changed the site path, the files and the temp so they all agreed and looks like the only thing I’ve done is eliminate the error concerning the “file directory not being writable”. Sigh.

Richard

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-18 14:18:52

Els,

Ignore that last message – The only thing not working is the images path – the site is now fully operational. I had still needed to move a couple of files into the magazine folder – I found a couple of stray php files floating around in the wrong place and moved them over and now everything is fully operational. Thank you for all your help.

Yours Richard Marcus

els · 2011-12-18 16:42:24

Glad you figured it out!

The only thing not working is the images path

What do you mean by ‘not working’? The site doesn’t show images, the error in diagnostics is still there, something else?
If your image directory is /magazine/images/, then the value for ‘Images directory’ in advanced preferences should be just images.

Last edited by els (2011-12-18 16:42:53)

Richard Marcus · 2011-12-18 18:11:06

What’s happening is that the error in diagnostics is still there and I’m being told I need to change file permissions to 777 – What that means I don’t know – This hasn’t been working since long before we changed servers and I’ve become used to hosting images for the site through my own blog, so I’m not overly concerned.

thanks again for all your help.

els · 2011-12-18 18:48:44

You can change the permissions for that directory in your FTP software (right click on the directory name), or through the host’s admin panel (cPanel, Plesk or something like that). But it’s strange that you get this error for ‘images’ only, and not for ‘files’ or ‘textpattern/tmp’.

Last edited by els (2011-12-18 18:49:41)

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#1 2011-12-17 17:35:39

Help Moving Site Please!

#2 2011-12-17 17:47:57

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#3 2011-12-17 18:05:12

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#4 2011-12-17 21:02:53

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#5 2011-12-17 23:19:39

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#6 2011-12-18 12:21:47

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#7 2011-12-18 14:00:37

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#8 2011-12-18 14:18:52

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#9 2011-12-18 16:42:24

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#10 2011-12-18 18:11:06

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

#11 2011-12-18 18:48:44

Re: Help Moving Site Please!

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