Question: Migrating a Geeklog site

Answer: Sooner or later, you'll be facing the problem of having to move your Geeklog site from one server to another, e.g. when changing hosting services. Here are a few tips to successfully make that transition:

1. Create a backup of your Geeklog database on your old server
   
2. Make backups of the story images in the images/articles and the userphotos in the images/userphoto directories
   
3. Make a backup of your config.php for reference
   
4. Make a backup of your theme

We'd suggest that you start with a fresh install on your new site. Moving your site is also the perfect opportunity to upgrade if you haven't been running the latest version of Geeklog anyway (use the "GL Version Test" link on your old site to check if you are running the current version).

Once you have Geeklog up and running on the new server, you can drop the database, create an empty database again, and then import the database backup from your old site (see Restoring a database backup).

• If you had any plugins installed (besides the Static Pages plugin), you should now upload their files on the new server as well (don't run any install scripts for those plugins, though).
  
• Upload your story images and userphotos into their new locations.
  
• If you're upgrading to a new Geeklog version in the process, then don't upload your theme just yet. New Geeklog versions usually include changes in the theme files and you should use one of the included default themes until you can be sure your migrated site works properly.
  
• If you're upgrading your Geeklog site, run the install script in upgrade mode now.
  
• If you migrated a Geeklog 1.5.x database, you will need this script to fix the paths in the database. Alternatively, you could try setting the paths in your siteconfig.php file (as of Geeklog 1.5.1), as that would override the paths from the database, so that you can then log into your site and change the paths in the Configuration there.
  
• If you've updated any of your plugins, run their upgrade scripts now, if necessary (please refer to the documentation of your plugins to see if that is necessary).
  
• Make sure everything works properly. See if you can edit stories, for example.
  
• Update your theme, if necessary. Refer to Geeklog's theme documentation for a list of changes in the themes.

That's it. You've successfully migrated your Geeklog site.

Common problems

• If the URL of your site changed, then the URLs to any uploaded images in your stories will still point to your old site. There is, unfortunately, no easy solution for this yet, so you'll have to edit those image URLs in the database directly (using phpMyAdmin). This is a known bug and will be addressed in a future version of Geeklog.

Search engine ranking

Somewhat related is the question how moving your site may affect your search engine ranking. Google employee Matt Cutts provides some insight in his article, Moving to a new web host.

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FAQ » Installation » Migrating a Geeklog site