madteckhead’s blog

It’s been awhile since we have had any travel adventures, we have been very preoccupied with university.

I started university with the equivalent of 4 Australian subjects, except they were all in German. A language I am still only becoming familiar with. Recently I dropped one so I could make a serious attempt at Neural Networks, and German. Having missed a level of German, in comparison to my classmates, I am finding it very difficult - perhaps too difficult.

Recently Ellie attended an Environmental conference in Berlin, where she won a 400€ gift voucher to spend at a travel agency in Germany. So having a weeks holidays from university we booked a room across the boarder in the Austrian Alps. (Where I am writing this post from).

The town is a quaint, stereotypical alpine village, centered around a small lake. We are staying in “the Hotel with the Organic Kitchen”. And needless to say the food is amazing. Its been a real treat, there is even a sauna and spa bath.

We came prepared for a summer holiday, however yesterday when we were climbing one of the 2000m high alps, it suddenly turned very cold. 3deg in fact. Just before we reached the summit. This weather would usually posed no problem, however we were decked out in our best Ozi thongs & tee shirts. While the locals were prepared for anything with waterproof jackets, backpacks and these funny looking hiking sticks.

Today its has been raining, with the odd patch of snow flakes. The region is quite picturesque. We took advantage of the situation with a nice deep snooze until lunchtime, followed by a session in the sauna, making up for our draining climb yesterday.

Another thing that you may find amusing, was waking up on the morning we were to leave for the trip and having Ellie tell me I would need my passport for the trip. O, turns out she forgot to tell me that the place we were going is in another country! Ha.

Enjoy the photo’s.

p.s. See if you can navigate around the 360 Panorama ‘Film’ (the last image - you’ll need quicktime)

Nathan

Cute Austrian log cabin

Spazieren gehen

Ellie & a Burg

Traditional Austrian House

Local Jetty

Funny musical instruments

Lake in Kufstein

Yellow mountain flowers, and mountains.

360 Degree Panorama from a nice vantage point

Note: for above image (or below link):

CLICK-DRAG within image to pan and tilt.
ZOOM IN with SHIFT key, while panning or still.
ZOOM OUT with CONTROL key.

360 Degree Panorama from a nice vantage point

So recently I decided to move and update my wordpress instance to a new server, with a new domain name. Here is what worked for me.

1. SSH to the current site and zip all the files into an archive.zip. (Don’t just download all the files with a GUI FTP application as it can be very slow, and the program might not copy everything)

2. Download the archive.zip, save it somewhere safe as a backup.

3. Install a new copy of wordpress on your new server (of the most upto date version). You are really only doing this to save the effort of manually creating a database, and configuration file that points to the database.

4. Download the wp-config.php file from the new wordpress directory.

5. Upload the archive.zip, and unzip it to the desired directory. eg. [your site home]/blog/. (I think its a good idea to keep the same subdirectory as your last host. As I tried to change it the first time and the copyed instance of wordpress would not run.)

6. Copy the wp-config.php file you downloaded in step 4 back over the file on the new server.

7. Go you your current sites MyphpAdmin and export the database (pref. as a Gzip), save it somewhere safe.

8. Unzip the exported database, and open with your favorite text editor. Search for your old domain name eg. myolddomain.com and replace it with mynewdomain.com. Depending on what plugins you have installed you might like to check each replacement one at a time. save the file when all changes are made. Note: Its a good idea to update all you all email address at this point as well. if your email address was somethingold@myolddomain.com, after the above search and replace it is now somethingold@mynewdomain.com. So search for somethingold@mynewdomain.com and replace it with somethingnew@mynewdomain.com. This is important for a future step.

9. Go you your new sites MyphpAdmin and select the database you created during install, select all the tables and ‘drop’ them. Then import the sql file you saved in step 8.

10. Visit your new site in your browser, go to the admin section. You might find your password not working. In this case click resend password (or something to that effect). Check you email and use your new password to log in.

11. Go to options > permalinks and update it to the correct setting. (from memory this ensure the .htm??? file is created with the correct settings.

12. Check most things are working. Depending on what plugins and hacks you had made you might have to search the files you unziped from the archive for any more references to you old domain and correct them. You might also need to notify 3rd party services, such as paypal that you have moved. If all is well you should remove the archive.zip file for security reasons.

Notes:

You should probably keep your old site files close for a week or so while you ensure that all is well, as it might take a few days for you to spot something odd happening. These were my experience working with dreamhost.com systems, so other servers may differ a little.

(Ignore this link, its just required by a blog search engine so that they index this blog.) Technorati Profile
Blogarama

Actually, maybe that title doesn’t work.

Anyhow, a small selection of photos from or travels to Heidelberg for May day. A very awesome occasion in Germany for students.

Note: You can click these images for a slightly larger view.

A nice view of Heidelberg, a city in Baden-Württemberg that lies on the Necker.

A interesting perspective of the ruined Schloss from inside.

A view of Heidelberg from the Schloss wall.

A great example of what might happen if you can’t keep up maintenance for a couple of hundred years.

I’ve also worked out how to add those annoying tags to my nice images. Some time within the next few weeks I will have an online photo store available at www.lightfootphotos.com, until then the site will redirect here. Keep your eyes out. Of course you will be able to purchase high quality versions of these images (without the copyright tag)

Best wishes to all you sleeping beauties down under,

Nathan