I thought I would share a bad experience I had yesterday with a Worpress backup plugin.

First off I am sure there is nothing wrong with the plugin, but it easily created user error on my part.

I started doing nightly backups with it several days ago and I was feeling pretty secure about it. So yesterday I thought it would be good to test a restore to boost my confidence even more.

I opened the latest version of HeidiSQL, highlighted my test database and then choose import SQL file and then ran it.

About 1/3 of the way through it created an error (something about line one that was not helpful at all). The way the script is written it drops the table first and then recreates it. When it created the error it drop the entire table and didn’t create a new one.

No problem, it was on my testing database – right? No, it was not!

Also the way the script is written it says to “use” my actual database and not the real one! Yes, user error on my part.

So, I thought let me try restoring it again from another backup. This time it worked and was going really fast at first and then started slowing down to one line per second. At that rate it might have taken a whole day to complete or more since it was continually slowing down.

So be careful with this plugin.

I am setting up my first dedicated box.

1. Windows 2003,
2. IIS6,
3. PHP 5.2 build 3790
4. MySQL5.

I had my host install PHP for me.

I installed MySQL and got it working fine with my Coldfusion pages – so we know the database is work.

I created a PHP hello world page and it worked fine. So we know PHP is working.

But when I tried my WordPress blog I get:

“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is required for WordPress.”

So I Google the error and found this helpful page:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/105098

I added both IUSR_COMPUTERNAME and “Network Service” to have
read/write access to C:\PHP like they talked about – but that didn’t work.

I made sure that the php_mysql.dll extension was uncommented (restarted IIS) – but that didn’t work.

In php.ini file, I changed the “extension_dir” to point to “./ext/” (restarted IIS) – but that didn’t work.

I then tried “extension_dir” to point to “C:\PHP\ext\” (restarted IIS) – but that didn’t work.

I then tried “extension_dir” to point to “C:\PHP\” (restarted IIS) – but that didn’t work.

Here is the php info for MySQL:

Update: I figured it out. All the settings above are correct. For some reason I just needed to reinstall WordPress.

Update 2: I didn’t have to reinstall WP, all I had to do was deactivate one of my plugins (Quick Stats which was causing the error).

(Iowa rentals)