Thread

Hello.  I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue. 

QUICK SUMMARY
I migrated a site from local dev to my Engine Hosting production server. After going through my checklist of alterations that needed to be made in the config.php file and the control panel (urls, server paths), everything in the control panel worked & looked fine, but all of the public URLs turned up as blank in the browser.

http://acs.pmhclients.com/ - Index page
http://acs.pmhclients.com/wheel_loader/gp_buckets - URL to a deeper page
http://acs.pmhclients.com/acssys/ (posted just so you can see it behaves as it should)

WHAT I DID
*Backed up the entire production site to preserve config.php and any other files I didn’t know about…
*Exported local SQL database via phpMyAdmin.  SQL compatiblity mode was set to MYSQL40. All other settings were default.
*Imported the .sql file into the Engine Hosting database.
*FTP’d over the new files. 
*Replaced config.php with the previously backed up version (also checked it - it is proper) and manually revised all the server paths and URLs in the control panel.

I actually repeated the above process twice.  After each upload process I checked every nook and cranny possible.

I’ve been communicating with Engine Hosting support on this as well.  They have been supportive and responsive but so far we have not found the root of the problem.  They just informed me the are having a Senior Server Administrator look at it but also advised me to seek support here in the forums.

Any insight you may care to offer will be greatly appreciated. 

Cheers!

-Eric

Hi, Eric.

What happens if you go into your back end and create a new template group with some Hello World content in it. Then try to view that from the front end.

Also, do you have any sort of .htaccess on the new site?

Hi Sue!  Thanks for looking at this.

Your suggested Hello World test worked, although I’m not experienced enough to figure out what the success of the test reveals. : )
acs.pmhclients.com/hello_world/

Yes, I do have an htaccess file there to remove the index.php via the directory check method.  Here is the code contained within:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

What we need to do next is to figure out which template group is the default template group.

When you click the Templates tag, you should see a list of templates. One of them should be the default template.

See the image below for an example.

Which template group is your default one?

“site” is the default.  I attached a screenshot of my templates in the control panel for whatever it’s worth.

Additional Info:
When I look at the code in Templates > site>index via the control panel on my local site, it contains code (my code - as expected).
When I look at the code in Templates > site>index via the control panel on the production site , it is blank.
Just checked other templates on the production site via the control panel - all are devoid of code.

Were you saving templates as files on your other site?

Could the import of the SQL file maybe have gone awry when being re-imported to the database? Hopefully not though.

Perhaps a quick check of the exp_templates table in the database might be worth a look to see if there is data in the template_data field?

Best wishes,

Mark

@Sue,

Yes, I initially created all templates via the control panel, then immediately saved the blank templates as files and edited with my text editor (TextMate).

@Mark

Hello.  Your answers to other’s Qs have helped me in the past.  Thanks for looking at my thread.
I checked out the fields you specified on the remote host – they do contain data.  For example, I can see the code for my site’s index file in there, along with others.

You also need to mimic what you had previously by creating your edit directories and making the path changes as needed.

Once that happens, you should see content again.

(I did this once before too.)

Edit: Per Sue’s suggestion, the Post-Migration Path Checklist in this post has been added to the wiki. http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Post-Migration_Path_Checklist/

That was it!
Templates > Global Template Preferences > Basepath to template file directory was still pointing to my local server path (screen shot for viz-aid)

I adjusted it for the correct local server path, and it works now: products.acs-coupler.com. ...but is nowhere near finished.

Many thanks to you both, Sue and Brian!

This list is (obviously) not exhaustive, but here’s the list of things I have so far to check for path corrections after a server migration.  The original list came from Daniel in tech support over at Engine Hosting.  Feel free to add to it publicly as server migration seems to be an issue for others besides myself.

Post Migration Path Checklist:

1) Weblog administration > Weblog management > Edit Preferences > Path settings
(2) Weblog administration > File upload preferences > Edit
(3) Members and Groups > Membership preferences > Avatar preferences
(4) Members and Groups > Membership preferences > Member photo preferences
(5) Members and Groups > Membership preferences > Signature preferences
(6) System Preferences > General configuration
(7) System Preferences > Captcha preferences
(8) System Preferences > Emoticon preferences
(9) My Account > Extras > Quick Links
(10) If you installed the Forums module, you will need to update its preferences to your new domain as well.
(11) Templates > Global Template Preferences > Basepath to template file directory

Very cool! Glad you were able to get things going again.

You might want to consider posting this in the EEWiki. Don’t hesitate to post again if need be.