Smartest way to rebuild wordpress

  • So I’ve build my website, installed tons of plugins, deleted most of them, used caching plugins, made FTP mistakes, and messed up a lot due to the learning curve (Im new to this).

    My website is online and looks and runs fine. But the speed is very slow and newly installed plugins give me the white screen of death often. My FTP is a mess, folders have been (accidentally) moved and I when I want to update a file I need to put in a different folder than I used to. I have no ide why.

    For my own comfort, and for the good sake of having everything in order, I want to explore the possibility of resetting as much as possible. (Folder structure, removing useless files, etc) without my wife (the writer on the website) experiencing major hickups. So a couple of things that must work flawless as much as possible:
    1. Minimizing downtime (d?h)
    2. Jetpack stats (we just started out and want to track our progress)
    3. Customizations made to the style.css and functions.php of my theme.
    4. And preferably: I fear that I have to set up every plugin (Quick Redirect, Jetpack, Mobile Theme are most important) all over again; is there a way to retain their settings when resetting my server folder structure?

    Ofcourse, I have a backup (Vaultpress), but this will copy the faulty folder structure if I just use that, right? What is the smartest course of action?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • In essence you’re looking at a re-build, which sounds scary, and does require some thought, but is really just a series of steps, and worthwhile since you seem to have files in the wrong place and a database that might be pointing to some of thee, so it’s not a quick fix. So make a cup of coffee and read on…

    Loads of possible ways to attack this, but presuming you’re not heavily into code… given the above, I’d look to build a replica in a test area, and then move this back to live.

    Roughly speaking a WordPress installation consists of :
    1. Files viz
    1a. The core software
    1b. Themes
    1c. plugins
    1d.Uploads
    2. The database

    So first I’d see if you host provider lets you create sub domains – if so, create one.

    Into that install wordpress, that the core software 1a taken care of !
    Part of that install will have created a new database, so that will be clean.
    Then upload your theme (1b taken care of), and set any parameters needed – Given that you will still have the live system, then you can have the old live in one screen and the new live candidate in another and just fill in by looking at the old one.
    Then install any plugins – and yes, whilst there are other ways to do this that could save you doing it, given that you are not sure of the state of everything, I’d set each plugin up again. As per above, you have the live system to copy from. That’s 1c taken care of.
    Uploads – If your uploaded images are in one sensible place, then I’d just copy this folder over. If all over the place, then you could consider re-uploading them, your call !

    Then finally you need to move the content over. Use WordPress export/import to do this for you, it’ll pull across most if not all of the stuff. Anything missing, you can do manually but it shouldn’t be much !

    Then test and make sure all is working, and you have a live site- it’s just as a sub-domain.

    Then back all this up !! – files and database!

    From here you can do several things I suspect, but the way I’d do it is to

    Back the live site up – files and database

    Then I’d look at the wpconfig file on the live site, and copy the database settings, or know what they are.

    Then there are several routes you could take, and someone cleverer than me might suggest something else.

    However I’d copy across the sub domain files to the old site, a chunk at a time, and ensuring that any spurious directories on the live site are deleted.

    The alter the wp-config file to point at the live database

    That gives you all the files, but the wrong database (ie the new live files are pointing at the subdomain database)

    So I’d copy using phpmyadmin the database from the subdomain to the live domain.

    Then you’ll need to change the database to have the live url in it

    in MySQL within phpmyadmin type the following

    UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = 'https://domain.com' WHERE option_name IN ('siteurl', 'home')

    where domain.com is your love domain.

    You should now have a live site without the rubbish.

    Thread Starter Jummul

    (@jummul)

    A subdomain! Ofcourse, how could I be so ignorant. An amazing thank you to you, sir. Kudos to your detailed and extensive response. I just need to check some things server-side. I have the following folder structure:

    htdocs
    -www
    -domainname
    -stats
    -subdomainname

    I installed everything in the WWW folder (as I was told by my server). And somehow these files got copied to the domainname folder (at least I thought that that was what was happening).

    Due to some missclicks (never use a Wacom in Filezilla as things are easily moved to different folders!) some folder where moved. Now in order to update files I must place them in the domainname folder.

    But the subdomain folder doesn’t have child-folders. WordPress is installed directly into that folder. So when I finish this big move and copy my fresh wordpress from the subdomain folder tot the domainname folder, what happens to the WWW folder? Can I ignore that?

    I don’t know if this is a common setup for a server, I have experience with this provider only. I’ll look into it on the forums of the provider; but maybe someone here has answer also.

    I’m trying the rebuild next weekend probably, I’ll keep you updated!

    Not sure, you’d need to check with with your server provider.

    It is normal that

    https://www.mydomain.com and https://mydomain.com resolve to the same thing. Normally there is then only once instance of the files, and both URLs point to that.

    Looks like you server provider has two instances of the files – one in a www folder and one in the domain folder and is maybe auto copying between the two?

    Would be worth a chat with your server provider to see is that is what is happening.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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