A forced update for the php version rendered the custom theme I’d designed, based on a free theme, incompatible. It completely crashed, and no update was available. So, all the pages etc. were there but the design would have to be fixed.

We had exhausted our ‘file names’ limit, so we had to move to upgraded hosting, which meant moving all the sites. Unfortunately, the docweasel.com site was so huge the WP Import wouldn’t import, and on top of that the database was corrupted, in the worst way. The user table was damaged and I couldn’t log in. I tried all the methods of inserting a new admin and none worked. Not only that, the site wouldn’t upload files, wouldn’t update things like featured images, or settings. It would allow editing of posts and pages, oddly.

The first determination was the site needed to be split in two- the comics and the other features. It was just too big and didn’t allow for expansion, and there were many more comics we wanted to include. So, taking databases apart and importing piecemeal finally worked and docweaselcomix.com was born. I suggest using 2 domains to do something like this, because I could get a stable version, then import that database into docweaselcomix.net, experiment, then we I’d reached the next step import that db to the .com version.

All the sliders were lost, and had to be recreated. The uploads folder was a mess and had to be emptied and restocked. A lot of the present site, as much as possible, is hotlinked instead of using WP native uploader. This eliminates WP huge image database, the post that accompanies every image, all the thumbnails it makes (I put in plugins to thwart this, but WP still tries to make them through various plugins etc.) I edited a lot of plugin files to defeat thumb making.

Then I started to go through all the ‘wishlist’ comics and have begun adding them. Here we go!