Backup/restore advice

Started by Fredrik_J, May 11, 2009, 07:54:07 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Fredrik_J

Hi,

Didn´t know where to post this, so this will have to do...

First a suggestion. Wouldn't "backup/restore of forum/database" deserve a topic of it's own in the documentation? This is of major importance to the running of a forum. I know there are a few very good posts out there on the subject, but they are hard to find since they generally appear as a solution to other problems. This should probably be posted under "requests" in the docs section, but why don't I stay logged on when I go there? SSI, anyone?! And what´s wrong with people? Most of the requests are for support, not documentation...

What I would like to add to the subject, as I can't remember seeing this before is that the importance of running "repair_settings.php" after restoring a backup is often stressed, but if you are for instance replicating your forum to another server for testing purposes, or moving to a new server while the old one is still up, it might be equally important to also reset all themes (in Admin CP) after restoring.

I have a SMF 2.0 RC1 forum with a custom theme and when I - after having set up the TEST server with a newly made backup (and running "repair_settings") - went to uninstall a mod AND also choosing to do so for my custom theme, my PRODUCTION forum went down! This was due to the fact that the path to the custom theme was still pointing to that server. Resetting the themes before doing the uninstall solved this problem, of course, but only after having restored both forums again! Lucky me, they aren't that big yet...

While on the subject I will stick this in here as well. I found a post that was of unmeasurable value to someone like me, running a forum with a utf8 default language. When exporting/importing data from/to phpmyadmin (as is often needed for backup/restore) choose comp ability with MYSQL4 to be sure to keep all characters intact during the operation. Great thanks to whoever posted that!

Please note also that doing a backup from inside SMF Admin on a utf8 language forum not necessarily mean that you get a utf8 compliant file as output. I would advice to do all database backups from the sql manager instead (and using FTP for the forum itself).

Best regards,

Fredrik

Advertisement: