Hello, my wordpressed friend!

Today we would talk on how to migrate from one hosting to another one. I would share with you some thoughts, insgights as usual, and also some useful links and advice which would allow your migration.

1) in the case you would like your readers did not notice some troubles with the blog and in general with site - be noticed it could take up to 3 days while your new DNS server would be updated with new informartion. In my case it was just 30 minutes, still it could be different time. Anyway - before making any changes at the settings of your domain registrator (it means yiu would change DNS server - which is provided by your hosting provider) prepare new hosting and perform the full movement of your site to the new hosting (old site should be kept in working state). For operating with the new hosting use temporary url which should be provided by your hosting provider

2) I would advice to make the complete backup of your site at the previous hosting (everything: files and dbs)

3) in the case you use fantastico scripts for installing wordpress or your favorite phorum (e.g. phpbb) - be accurate as this fantastico script do not ask you the encoding of newly created db and collation of the tables. In my case (belarussian and russian languages) the collation should be cp1251_general_ci, but fantastico set it to latin1_swedish_ci. As there are lots of tables - it is impossible to change the collation by hands. Here you could find appropriate discussion for the phpbb software http://www.netenberg.com/forum/index.php?topic=6579.0 In my case for phpbb I needed to install it manually not using this fantastico script, so be aware of that. For wordpress - it could be easy deal. Install it automatically using fantastico script, and then in phpmyadmin remove all the tables from DB, then change collation of DB to the appropriate (it is also done in phpmyadmin), and finally make import of the DB from old hosting If you have access to the db console or mysql configuration file you could set the following values (for collation latin1_swedish_ci) character_set_server = latin1 collation_server = latin1_swedish_ci Here you could read some information on the encoding and collations http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-connection.html

4) it is a surprise for me but I found that for mysql4.x we need specify utf8 in the file wp-config.php, but for mysql5.x - utf-8. This is really strange thing..

5) conversion from phpb2.x to 3.0 manual http://netenberg.com/phpBB/docs/INSTALL.html#update I have not managed to convert this correctly, and would work over that a little, but may be it would be useful for someone.

6) be noticed wordpress has table “wp_options” containing two settings where site url is written. These settings names are “siteurl” and “home”. The thing is when working with the new hosting installation and checking all is ok you would use temporary URL (e.g. http://64.82.31.233/~snywonde/zmicer_com/). But wordpress php scrips check these settings and make the redirect to the appropriate specified resource. As result if you want use this temporary settings - adjust these settings specifying this temporary url, and all would be ok (you could do it using phpmyadmin which usually is installed in your cpanel).

7) when converting phpbb from 2.x to 3.x you need old installation to be accesible. But it is almost impossible there would be direct access to the SQL server at the another hosting. So you need install phpbb from previous hosting at the new hosting temporary using fake names, and then you would be able converting.

Good luck,  all my dear! Zmicer.