Hello all, I have been thinking about this for a couple days now. JUST THINKING ... If, say a while down the line, an active BT_server that contains many applications, has to move. Say for example the site is located at here.mydomain.com , it has over 100 apps in the database. Now the site has grown beyond the allowed size (on a paid server) and in order to continue needs to move to another site like here.some-other-server.net . So the question here is ... is it possible to backup the SQL and physical files, then move it to the new site, import the Db and restore the physical files ? I am not thinking of doing this myself (I own my server) but it may be something that would come up in the future as Buzztouch continues to grow. Thanks

I'm going to say most likely. If I'm not mistaken all the data is stored in the DB. You should be able to setup the server at the new location and then use your backup from the original site to restore using the cpanel tools on the new site. phpadmin will allow you to export the tables also. Of course I could be full of C**p :) So maybe someone with a little more experience than I have can chirp in....

Hi, This should not be a major issue. My suggestion would probably be to deploy this on a VPS or Dedicated server in the first place as then it is quite easy to make an image of the server or perform a live migration. If the IP address changes then you just need to update that buy updating the DNS for the domain. Your way with backing up the files and MySQL would work as well but my method is the easier way as you don't need to worry about getting the Operating system configured exactly the same. Jonathan Hamon

Yeah, good question and good comments from the others. The thing that most folks get hung up on is losing sight of the already deployed application(s) on hundreds or thousands of devices. Don't forget to consider where they are getting their data. It's important because they probably have a domain name compiled in them in various places that points to your self hosted server. I've done this a few times and use this strategy: a) Lockout all your users so knowbody changes any data. Phones can continue to connect to the existing backend. Phones don't change data in most cases but you may need to disabled any image upload screens or any screens that write data to the server while you do the migration. This is usually trivial. b) Backup the entire directory structure. This is usually done with gzip or some other command line utility on the existing server. Zip that baby up into one file. c) Do a mySQL dump of the entire database. d) Download the .zipped directory structure you made when you backed up the directories, and the backup file created by the mySQL dump. e) Setup the new server. Get mySQL running and import the database file you downloaded from your old server. f) Overwrite the new directory structure with the .zipped version you downloaded. Upload it, use the command line to extract it to the proper place. At this point you should have an exact copy of your web application running on the new machine. However, the config.php file on the new server, and the database on the new server still has values that include your domain name (that is pointing to the old server that's still running). e) Visit the control panel you use where you control the domain name and the DNS. Point this domain name to your new server. Give this a few hours to propogate to the new server. It can take up to 24 but generally takes only a few hours. Test test test, be sure your domain is pointing to the new server. f) Visit your newly installed control panel and make sure all is well - it should be fine. g) Delete all the data on your old server (directories, database) then cancel that account.