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Is your blog showing its age. Was it created with mysql 4.0 or earlier? Then you know what it is like to click and wait and click and wait to do anything. Follow these simple none destructive steps and you can turbo charge your blog and bring it into the present century and learn how to backup and restore your MYSQL database while you are at it.
- Backup your database Wp-db-backup plugin
- Run the backup once it is installed. Check all the boxes to get all the data.
- extract the .gz file I use 7-zip open source for this
- create a new database on your host 5.0
- log into the new database
- import function
- browse and select uncompressed file
- Select the ascii option for character set usually utf8 will be selected
- click go
- change the wp-config.php file to point to the new 5.0 database
- upload the config file to your blog
- download and install the search and replace plugin
- activate the plugin You will find it under the “Manage” Tab
- search for ?? replace with “space character”
You should now be able to view your blog and see it running much faster than before. Here are a couple of screen shots you might find useful.
Restore blog files to new Database
Click on this graphic to make it larger so you can read the words if you have eyes as old as mine.
You should now have a much faster blog and it has a clean compact lay down of the data. And should there be any issues. The original database is still there. You can always go back to it by changing the wp-config.php file back to point to the original database.
If you have to restore the file again it will deactivate the search and replace plugin each time you do. Simply re-activate the plugin and run it again.
I had to use the ascii option to get ?? for the odd characters otherwise I got a question mark inside a solid black diamond and search and replace would not replace that character.
Possible Caveat
I was working on an old blog with just one unpublished post. It appeard that post was not backed up or restored. I would recommend making copies of any unpublished post you have on your blog. One easy way to do this is install Windows Live Writer and set it up. Then copy each of the unpublished posts to Live Writer. You could do the same to a series of Notepad files if you want to keep it simple.
Good Idea Here
Set the backup plugin to auto backup at least once a week. It will be a life saver if a server or your database ever goes down.
A good review post is Single Property Websites - Hosting
Now back to working on how I got the spell checker working when upgrading from 2.0.4 to 2.3.2. I did it, and can do it again, but need to know how I did it.
As always here at the lab any input or questions are certainly welcome.
Stumble it!
11 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Smith (491 comments.) // Jan 29, 2008 at 6:27 pm
If you read all the way to the end you probably should seek out serious help : )
2 Jon (4 comments.) // Jan 29, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Thanks realestatebloglab.com! I found this post very useful. Where do I seek some help?
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6 Jon (4 comments.) // Jan 30, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I found this post very helpful! Thaks for the info and keep it up. Going to seek serious help now.
7 Dave Smith (491 comments.) // Jan 30, 2008 at 8:14 pm
You can ask any question you have right here in the comments on this post.
8 bobby // Aug 13, 2008 at 8:00 pm
What is being accomplished by search-and-replace of ?? with space character?
Is it necessary? If that is not done, what functionality is being messed-up? Thanks.
9 Dave Smith (491 comments.) // Aug 13, 2008 at 9:36 pm
As I stated in the post, if you don’t do that step all of your posts will be filled with question marks where there should be space characters in certain situation.
If you do this conversion process you will see them.
10 bobby // Aug 14, 2008 at 7:46 am
Hi Dave,
I did the conversion, and view quite a number of posts. Did not see any aberrant (?). I went ahead and did the search-and-replace anyway.
Just curious where you read/heard about the necessity for this step? Do you know an example post where the problem would occur?
Thanks for good article. Very useful info.
11 Dave Smith (491 comments.) // Aug 14, 2008 at 8:12 am
It occurred when I did the update on two of my blog sites. If you didn’t see them all the better, they are obvious everywhere if you have them.
There are so many variable in this process, it could be the hosting company, the version of PHP etc.
When they did appear in both of my conversions the process outlined removed them. Good to know it doesn’t occur in all instances.
I don’t think you will see an example because it is really ugly and anyone that does get them will take the steps to remove them, they are very annoying and have to do with certain characters. Those character might be put in by the browser used to create the content in the first place and have nothing to do with MYSQL itself.
I just ran into an instance where an Apple user was using the Opera browser to write blog posts. It was putting in hundreds of extra apple font formatting code which wasn’t visible till you looked at the post in code view. He switched to FF and the issue was resolved.
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