It turns out that it was surprisingly easy to move from one host to another. I’d love to think it’s simply my own brilliance, but let’s be honest here. Much of the work was easy because I had a copy of the data on my own PC. It was a bit out-of-date, but the general structure was in place. That saved a load of time, especially as I couldn’t get FTP access to my prior host.
I did happen to snag a MySQL export from the old host earlier this week, when it seemed as if I was having problems. That was really the magic piece. So I created a new database on the new host, then ran the script as an import. Very sweet indeed.
At first, I couldn’t get Movable Type running again. Turns out that I had forgotten to CHMOD the permissions on the main CGI scripts back to 755 after uploading them to the new host. Surprisingly, it seems that only the main CGI scripts need to be changed. Plugins and modules don’t. Cool.
Once I could actually get mt.cgi to run, I found out that I couldn’t access the database. All these little things. I swear they’re going to get me one day. So I then had to make sure I had the new database name and user name correct in the mt.cfg file, and re-upload it.
Finally, I had to change the paths to the weblog, as the directory structure on this host is different than on the last. But once I changed those settings, it was set. I could get to everything I needed and it all worked wonders. The rebuild went through and voilá – I was back in business (so to speak). All in all, the process was relatively painless.
Update: I also had to update the include statements in my search templates. They were pointing to static file names, and since the directory structure changed, it affected these too. I tell you, it’s those little things.