Life on the Road

I cannot express how frustrating this migration process was.  Everything that could go wrong, did.

Apparently the FTP program I have been using is not what you might call reliable, and a lot of files were lost/corrupted/whatever during the backup process from the old site.  So we had to download fresh WordPress files (and a new FTP client).  Then we had to work around the SQL errors being generated by the database.  Then we had to figure out how to use the quirky system 1 & 1 has in place to access the database.  Then we had to diagnose the errors WordPress kept throwing - including deleting one of the plugins altogether.

I could never, never have done this on my own.  And, frankly, the 1 & 1 Tech Support email team left something to be desired in the exchange (you know that feeling you get that you’re talking to someone in Pakistan who is reading you rote responses off a checklist?).

The hero of the piece?  “MichaelH” of the WordPress Support Forums.  What a guy!  Patient and knowledgable…  Thank you!!

So, as far as I can tell, other than my frayed nerves, the only damage done is that the “uploaded images” folder was found to be completely empty.  I do have all the pictures on my hard drive, but now they need to be manually uploaded all over again, one by one, and inserted into the appropriate place in all the posts in the history of the blog.  I’m going to work my way backwards.  It may take a while…