Rebuilding site from WP Database file

  • Good evening,

    I just lost all of the blog files on my host server, with no available backup. I have the WP database backup file, and have installed a new copy of WP and the database file. All works fine except all of the media (photos) are missing, of course. I have access to all of these files and can add them to the server. Is there a way to add them back into the media library, or re-importing them from a new location, and having them link properly to blog posts? In this case, I have 201 blog posts to repopulate. I have done 14 of them manually, but I am hoping there is a faster way than going in and rebuilding the directory structure of the WP uploads folder manually. Has anyone had to do this and found a better way?

    Thanks in advance,

    Eric

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    You can upload them in bulk via FTP, and then use https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/add-from-server/ to add them to your Media Library (despite its age, it still works great), but correcting them on the posts will still have to be a manual process.

    In the future, make sure that you keep full backups: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Backups

    Plugins like https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/updraftplus/ and https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/vaultpress/ (paid service) can really help to automate the process.

    Thread Starter mccallew

    (@mccallew)

    Thanks, James. I have been uploading via FTP trying to recreate the file structure (time consuming) so that the images will still link correctly. It seems when I try this plugin it just tells me that the images are already in the library (which I guess technically based on the WP database they are. They just won’t display in the media library. Hmmm…

    Thread Starter mccallew

    (@mccallew)

    Oh, and on my personal blog I do full backups via WP to Dropbox plugin, which seems to work very well. We just did not have that installed on this site ??

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Excellent, so it would seem if you can replicate the file structure, the database can still find them, that’s very good. ??

    Thread Starter mccallew

    (@mccallew)

    Yes, it seems that it can, at least to the outside world. Within the wp-admin panel the files display as missing unless you “edit” each image individually… and any image that was initially uploaded with a space in it will remain broken (presumably because WP added an underscore or some such thing upon upload). I am grateful that I can rebuild the structure, though still wish there was a way to have the re-uploaded images appear in the medial library. On the plus side, 99% of the images will never need to be accessed in the media library again (photographer’s blog, so always adding new content).

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Yeah, if the Add From Server plugin isn’t working for that, there isn’t really anything else.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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