Easy to advanced Wordpress

From DreamHost

So, you installed WordPress via the Easy One-Click installer in our panel -- but now you can't upload themes or plugins. Unfortunately, in easy mode, you cannot access the files for the installation (so you can only use the themes/plugins/languages we've included), but installation, upgrades, and maintenance are all handled for you!

So if you have already developed some of your WordPress blog (entered a few posts, or even had it going for several weeks or month) and now want more control over it, you need to convert it to an Advanced install.

Custom install

Basically what you want is a brand-new install of WordPress -- but using the same database and database tables as your old Easy install. So, your steps are:

• • • Warning, embedded images/media that were uploaded to the WP easy install may not transfer over to the new site because they were located on a directory on the easy install server. The DNS entry will point to your server (after you are done and the directories with your uploaded images will not be there).

1) Delete your simple one-click install. This will only remove the website files -- it will leave the database alone. You can do that here: https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=goodies.installer&

Click on "Manage installed applications", then select the domain in question and click the "Delete this domain" button.

It can take a few minutes to a few hours for the DNS to update correctly (easy installs are housed on a different server than the rest of your sites), so the system needs to clear it out and release the sub-domain so that it is available to add again.

2) Go have a snack or something like that, then come back and add the sub-domain that you had the easy install at to your hosting: https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=domain.manage&

(If it tells you "DNS already in system" then you might need to wait a little longer, unfortunately!)

3) Once you have the sub-domain added, go back to the One-Click Install panel and install WordPress as custom install. Where it says "select database" (after clicking the "Custom installation" button), you'd want to select the same database that was used for the simple install.

4) Once you get the email that WordPress has been successfully installed, go to the setup link. To make sure that all the old posts from the easy install are pulled into the advanced install, make sure that you are using the same table prefix. You can check what tables have data in your phpMyAdmin web interface (you can access it from your MySQL Databases page: https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=goodies.mysql&) and see what is the prefix on those tables. It usually is something like "wp_123456789_"

Then you should be all set with an install that you can customize to your heart's content!

Database Troubleshooting

If you are not using the correct set of tables (you can tell because your articles are not there) you will need to go edit the wp-config.php file to change the value of $table_prefix to the correct prefix. If you are not sure which set of tables is your old one, look at the tables in the database. If there are two sets, the set with the larger number of records is probably your old set. Once you have changed the table prefix, the change should be instantaneous. If your site now goes white, you need to login to the admin interface and it will say it needs to do a table upgrade. Let it. The site should now be back up and have your articles in it.