Hi everyone
I recently ran into some problems migrating a number of Expression Engine 1.6xx and 1.7xx sites from a Mediatemple DV3.5 Server to a DV4.0.
The process also involved an upgrade from Plesk 9 to Plesk 10 using the inbuilt Plesk Migration Manager, and I ran into all kinds of trouble with my sites - corrupted databases, broken user permissions, non-loading control panels.
It took quite a bit of work to fix, so I thought I’d post my solution here. This solution is mainly orientated towards EE1 sites, but the essential process will be the same for EE2 as well.
1. DON’T rely on the Migration Manager to make the transition. The structure of Plesk 10 is very different, with a number of new features including Customers, Site Plans and Subscriptions, and I think my problems mainly stemmed from the Migration Manager not managing the transition very well. Migrating manually will be more laborious but much more reliable.
2. If you’ve already used the Migration Manager, you’ll need to start from scratch, so delete the Domain, Customers, Subscriptions and Databases created by the Migration Manager.
3. First, on your new server, login to Plesk 10, and install a brand new Customer and Domain. You then need to assign them a Subscription (to allow them to login to the Control Panel) and a Service Plan (to allow them various permissions, bandwidths and site limits etc). In my case, I made sure the Subscription pointed to the right Customer, and then assigned them the Default Domain Service Plan. I think this is the step which the Migration Manager screwed up, and granted the correct user permissions to the site/database.
4. Back on your old server, I’d recommend updating your site to the latest release of EE first. Then, login to Plesk 9 and export the database from your old EE site (in my case, I used MyPhpAdmin to create a Gzip file). You then need download all the site content by FTP. This has the added bonus of making a full backup of your site and EE database. Keep it somewhere safe!
5. On your new server, login to your Customer’s control panel, and create a brand new database and database user. Make sure you use the same database name, database user and database password as you used on your old site (this is important!). Then import your old database into the newly-created one using a database admin tool (in Plesk 10 it’s PhpMyAdmin).
4. Then, upload all your old content to the new server using FTP. Make sure you check the File Permissions for the uploaded files - including system/cache, config.php and config_bak.php (which should be 666), and the various folders in Images/Uploads. Full details on the permissions are detailed here http://expressionengine.com/legacy_docs/installation/installation.html
5. For me, that completed the transition and got my sites working nicely.
Moral of the story: never trust a computer to do a job when you should really do yourself.
Cheers
Oliver