(1) Backup Magento using the built in backup tool. Download and uncompress the resulting SQL script. If changing the server or domain, search and replace “old.mysite.com” with “new.yoursite.com” Execute it to populate the new database instance.

(2) Copy all Magento files with the exception of the contents of the var/ directory.

(3) Edit app/etc/local.xml on the target instance and change the database, user and password, but not the encryption key. Also edit downloader/pearlib/pear.ini to correct the absolute paths it contains; no reason why these shouldn’t be relative to the Magento root directory, e.g. “./downloader/pearlib”.

(4) Execute the following SQL to prevent those nasty “Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry” errors from the log files when adding to the basket:

TRUNCATE `log_customer` ;
TRUNCATE `log_quote` ;
TRUNCATE `log_summary` ;
TRUNCATE `log_url` ;
TRUNCATE `log_url_info` ;
TRUNCATE `log_visitor` ;
TRUNCATE `log_visitor_info` ;
TRUNCATE `log_visitor_online` ;

Now tidy up permissions:

chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc
chmod -R o+w media

That should be it.

http://www.fliptextgenerator.com/

Uses apparently little-known character codes to invert most text (struggles with capitals).

http://www.freemaptools.com

It is written in PHP, and has a growing collection of add-ins, so I’ll be seriously evaluating it as an alternative to OSC for the Oriental Food Shop.

dafont.com

Can’t login to PayPal

(Remember, PayPal, Skype and eBay are the same beast.)

It is faintly amusing that every time somebody reports the problem, PayPal ask for browser, operating system, screenshots, etc. – delaying tactics, I’m sure that they have identified a cause already.

There is a history of similar problems going back to April, and Grace’s theory is that it is a result of the changes to the eBay look-and-feel at around this time.

But I have worked out a solution – a bit sneaky, but works for both eBay and PayPal – use the mobile sites from your usual browser.

To login, bid and pay from eBay: eBay mobile site – this works for UK accounts too.

To pay for an item through PayPal: PayPal mobile site – you will need to know the item number if paying for an eBay item, or the email address of the recipient for another payment. Again, this works OK for UK accounts.

The biggest problem arises from the tidying up of URLs used to access posts, Canonical URLs. The author of these changes Mark Jaquith blogs the background to these changes and makes a good case for them. The first problem is that www.motiveauto.com/page/1 is no longer a valid URL; this is unfortunate because this is a commonly used method of accessing the posts from a static home page (see using WordPress as a CMS). The correct (i.e. valid) URL is now www.motiveauto.com/?page=1

OK, lesson learnt, but it is a pity that it took four hours to find the cause of the problem – WordPress documentation is – shall we say – “loose”.

The next problem relates to the “share this” plugin; this encourages linking to he social bookmarking sites and also emailing a page to a friend. The CSS form doesn’t seem to work (possibly because of a new version of prototype.js) but should degrade gracefully to a web page. Unfortunately this doesn’t work if the source is a WordPress static page rather than a post. URL rewriting again? Looks like it, but I can’t quite put my finger on the cause.