wp-admin inaccessible due to development file paths

Can you clarify exactly what you did? Did you attempt to to move this dev site to a new server and change its urls?

On the old server I created a dev folder, installed wp and edited it with custom theme and essentially created a finished website. Then we switched hosting providers, so I uploaded all files out of the dev folder into the public_html folder on the new server, and then imported the db on the new server. I have attempted to change the urls to get rid of the dev in the url, but was unsuccessful due to the fact that I can’t access the wp-admin panel.

then imported the db on the new server

You’ll need to run more than a standard search & replace on the database due to the fact that some urls are stored in serialized arrays. There are a couple of tools in Moving_WordPress that should help with this.

Will I be able to use that plugin even though I no longer have access to the old server? I have all of the files backed up locally.

Oh it’s not a plugin nevermind haha

Don’t know about the plugin but you should be able to run the safe search & replace script on a copy of the database and then replace the existing database with the copy.

How would you suggest I run the search and replace tool. I was thinking of searching for “www.website.com/dev/” and replacing with “www.website.com/”. I know it’s a silly question but there’s all this jazz on their site about how you can seriously damage your installation.

Download a copy of the database, run the script on the downloaded dump. Upload the amended dump – to a new db if you want. Just remember to change your wp-config.php to match.

I ran the search and replace and even though there were some changes made, I’m still getting the same issue. wp-admin is still taking me to website.com/dev/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1. I searched for the word “dev” and came up with nothing. Now what?

Are you sure you ran the script and uploaded the db dump after the script had finished? That seemed to be very quick!

I have a copy of the db backed up on my computer, so I just ran it on the live db. I’ll import the tables into a new db, and change point the config file at it and see if that makes a difference.

229 Changes made, and still can’t access the wp-admin panel, and the blog still doesn’t display correctly.

229 changes? How many changes were made last time you ran the script?

Not that many. Less than 100 for sure.

I’m somewhat concerned as to how the same script run on (presumably) the same database can find more than twice the number of changes on one pass than on another. I’ve used that script a number of times and I’ve never had any problems.