Looking for Some WP Help

So after a couple of years of not being happy on my host and wanting to shut down the current domain I blog from (http://camplesegroup.com), I am working to make the leap. The plan is to move this blog to another domain I have on a different host, colecamplese.com. I toyed with switching platforms to MT, but at the end of the day I think WP is the better choice for my personal needs. I am however having a hell of a time making progress on moving forward.

Here are the dilemmas ... any help/advice/guidance would be greatly appreciated:

• My database is huge! Doing a raw SQL dump works every now and then, but the new host will not allow the DB that size ... and to tell you the truth, I'd like to start over. When I go through the tables there is so much stuff in there that I am guessing causes some of my site's performance issues. I'd prefer not to do the standard database export and inset on the other end.


• The way I'd really like to do this is via the built in XML export. I like the idea of only dealing with the posts, comments, and assets in that way. I am able to sort of make that work, but not quite. When I do an export, I do not get all of my posts. It stops giving them to me from sometime back in August. It is driving me crazy -- I have posted a couple of times to the WP forums at wordpress.org, but I haven't gotten any help there. Does anyone know what the story is with the XML export and why it might be doing this? Anyone at all have any advice for me?

Comments

[Andrea_R]

I'd reeeealy clean up that database as much as possible beforehand. There's probably a backload of spam comments, which WP doesn't really DO anything with so I have no idea why they are kept, as well as rss feed caching all over the place in the options table.

That's where I'd start.

I'd also pick a different new host, sorry. :-/ Limiting your database size now means that they'd likely not be happy should you get more popular.

As for the export only going partway through - the db cleanup might help, as well as upping php memory limits. which, you may even be able to do on shared.

Although I do have to say on really large blog exports, things have a higher chance of getting messed up. Straight database to database is definitely safer.

[Alan Levine]

I'd most highly recommend the full database export (which you, ahem) should do as a regular habit (there is a nice Wp-backup plugin).

You can likely reduce a good amount of file size, if you have access to a db amin tool like phpMyAdmin; on viewing your tables there is a menu at the bottom to "select tables with overhead" meaning tables with extra space, and then you select "optimize" - this reduces.

I doubt if the database is any cause of performance issues, but if it has never been optimized, that may help.

If you ever had SK2 installed, it generates a lot of stuff you may be able to kill.

There are some ways around the large database file. It is just a text file with SQL commands that build and populate the tables, and, with some know how, you can segment it into a series of smaller files, and upload it in batches. I have done this before.

The one thing to consider is if in your move, the URLs will change or not (will you maintain the same directory structure?)- If you change anything, you *can* do some global search and replace so you dont break old paths to images or posts; but it is better if you can keep the structure. I had to do this when I moved my first WP blog from Maricopa out to my own domain.

I'd be glad to try and help.

When looking at hosts, you definitely want one that provides a MySQL tool like phpMyAdmin.

[Jim Groom]

Glad to see it worked Cole!

@andrea_r You really do rule, and that @cogdog character ain;t so shabby either!

[Cole Camplese]

Thanks Jim! I ended up doing what I knew was the right thing to do -- actually move the database. I had to do it table by table, each time doing find and replaces, to get it to work. Nice thing is that I cleaned a ton of garbage out in the process.

[Alan Levine]

Nicely done!

but hey, set up some prettier permalinks ;-) ?p=1322 is like so machine code database id-ish

[Cole Camplese]

You know, I thought about changing the permalink structure, but I am worried about all the internal linking I've done through the years. Does WP auto-resolve those things if I change it now?