I broke a blog and had to fix it

Over the past couple of months I’ve done some tinkering with my blogs for various reasons. Part of that involved condensing the installations of my two blogs, here at DrAlb and our travel blog at On the road again, into a single database. I tried using a WordPress network installation and multiple installations using Installatron in a single blog but could get neither functioning correctly. In the end I installed one using Installatron and the other manually.

I have the free version of Jetpack installed on both and receive frequent reminders that I could pay to upgrade and benefit from automated backups. If I could handle both on a single subscription I’d probably do that but as I understand it I’d need to pay twice and I’m not prepared to do that. Neither do I want to attempt an amalgamation into a single blog at present though that might be an option at some point.

Installatron offers automated backup and I was able to set that up for the blog installed by that method but the other requires manual intervention. Early this morning it occurred to me that I should do something about backup so I backed up the complete hosting space and the MySQL database that supports the blogs and copied the files to my local hard drive. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to import the other blog into Installatron to automate backup.

Strangely Installatron claimed to have two WordPress installations but one pointed to an old version of a site. I tried in vain to adjust it to point to the current site and then decided to delete it. Although Installatron assured me that deletion would remove it fro Installatron but leave the database and directory untouched that was not what happened. Both disappeared and our travel blog with them.

I was easily able to restore the database and thought that webdisk might be the easiest method for copying back the deleted directory. It wasn’t. As happens with MacOS the copy created lots of hidden files associated with resource forks. Worse, the copy process stalled periodically and I had to restart with files it had missed. Eventually I tried FTP using Interarchy and had more success, no extraneous hidden files and no stalls.

With the database and all files restored the site did not load. After some digging around, including with the debug option on in WordPress, I found some files had not copied at all. Repeating relevant copies using Interarchy fixed those and I eventually got the site working again.

With that done, I returned to Installatron, imported the second WordPress installation, and set up automated backup. I”ll need to check again tomorrow to see that everything is working as it should.