Lesson Learned!

How the DB-Backup Plugin Saved a WordPress Site

When you delete a user, the pages that the user authored get deleted too. You’re given the option of assigning another user the posts and the links, but NOT THE PAGES.

Here’s the story…

I deleted a user on a client’s site. I was given the option of assigning another user the posts and links that the deleted user had written…

but NOT THE PAGES!

I had already assigned the posts to another user so I thought I was good to go…I made  my selection and deleted the user. But I soon realized, with a sinking heart, that all the pages that were owned by the deleted user disappeared!

What could I do?

Luckily, I had run the Database Backup plugin* before I started so I was able to restore the database. Here’s how it was done…

(1) Download and unzip the backup file, making sure that it can be located again!

(2) Logged in to my web host CPanel and selected phpMyAdmin (the one with the sailboat icon) from the Databases section.

(3) Choose the WordPress database you want to restore from the list of all available databases.

HINT:  The database name is contained in your backup zip file. In this example, it’s sswp01.

You need to DROP all WordPress tables in your database to make room for the restore.

(4) You should see the tables on the Structure tab…make sure that all of the boxes are checked then go down and select drop.

You will then see

(5) Click Yes IF YOU ARE SURE.

Your database is now empty.

(6) Click on the Import tab…

And use the browse button to locate the unzipped backup file on your computer and upload it.

(7) If it all goes well, you’ll see this. You’re done!

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PLEASE READ THIS !

If your .sql file is less than about 3meg in size, you will probably be fine with this method.

If your .sql file is larger, you can try the upload but you may get timeout errors. This is NOT the fault of WordPress – it is a host setting. If you have your own server you can change the settings. If you cannot alter that, and you get timeouts, you will have to do the following;

Open the .sql file in a text editor. Do NOT use a word-processor or Dreamweaver unless you REALLY know what you are doing – on a Windows machine NotePad is fine.

You will see something similar to this at the top:

– phpMyAdmin SQL Dump
— version 2.6.1-pl2
— http://www.phpmyadmin.net
—
— Host: localhost
— Generation Time: Jun 24, 2005 at 05:14 PM
— Server version: 4.0.24
— PHP Version: 4.3.11
—
— Database: `tamba2_data`
—
CREATE DATABASE `tamba2_data`;
USE tamba2_data;

Ignore all that, not needed. Everything else in that file needs copying and pasting into the SQL window. You highlight some text, copy it, paste it into the SQL window, click Go and after the Success message, you do it again with the next chunk of text. It can take a while, and you need to be careful that you miss no lines out.

From experience, there are a number of things which can mess things up when restoring and while nothing is fatal, it’s too complicated to describe here. If you run into trouble, please ask for help in the WordPress Support Forums.

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LESSON LEARNED! Be sure to run the Database Backup Plugin before you delete any user!

*WP-DB-Backup – Easily backup/restore your posts and entire Wordpress database. Download or send the backup to your email.