Ugh! I hope you don’t try that again! FYI, every WP instance must be in its own folder structure and have its own DB to work with.
First make a complete backup of your DB. Though it’s been corrupted, things could get worse before they get better. A backup assures you that you can revert to a known state. Speaking of which, if you have good backups, consider restoring to one of those rather than proceeding with what follows.
I’ve no real experience with recovery methods, I only know theory, so also consider asking for other opinions in the troubleshooting forum, which is probably where you should have asked in the first place.
I would go ahead and let the installer run. You should get your old installation back complete. WP may want to repair the DB, if it does, let it. If anything is missing after this, you can restore it from your backup. As long as you do not overwrite any options from the new installation, your backup data shouldn’t hurt anything.
That’s the theory anyway. The reality, I don’t know…
Hello bcworkz!
Thanks for your answer. I didn’t explain correctly my situation. I have of course choose 2 different folders. But the second installation changed wp-config of the first instance (and maybe something else too).
In the meanwhile i’ve receive a E-Mail from googlebut, that my page cannot be indexed.
It’s maybe the htaccess my issue?
Stefano
ps: i would like to avoid a restore.
googlebut sounds good: i meant googlebot of course! :-)))))
😀 I’ve called it much worse things on occasion!
You site could not be indexed probably because WP is not working properly. Part of it could be .htaccess, but your DB is also corrupted or you would not be getting the installation script.
Chances are the DB is not very corrupted, just a small detail or two needs to be fixed. But where is the flaw?? You could try installing yet a third instance of WP, this time ensuring it has its own DB. Once that is up and running, compare it with your broken site’s .htaccess and options table. Other than a different path to the installation and different DB credentials, all else should be the same (excluding content you’ve added of course). Find where it’s not and fix it.
If it were me, I would (after making a backup) start over fresh with a new install. Then make a new custom backup set (the SQL backup format is mostly a bunch of INSERT SQL queries) that only adds my original content by removing all INSERTs for standard WP content that already exists in the new installation.
You may also find a huge quantity of unneeded content in your backup like expired transients that are safe to remove, greatly reducing the bulk of the INSERT queries. Naturally you should have a good understanding of mySQL queries to try this.
One step beyond! (Madness)
It was a good idea: because my second instance has already its own DB i’ve compared them both. You’re right, it was a little bit corrupted: the prefix was changed back to its original value wp_. Now i’ve changed to my prefix back and of course the tables options and usermeta too. Now SHA-BANG !!! The login is here again! Well, it’s not really my customized login, but it’s here.
The next problem: after login i get a blank screen.
Keep on searching! Another good tip?
ciao
Stefano
It seems to be something corrupted in the siteurl and home options in the options table. I’m not sure what i should put in:
http://www.mysite.com -> siteurl???
http://www.mysite.com/install-subfolder -> home???
relativ ugly this thing!
Great news! I think we’re really close now!
siteurl and home values in the options table should typically be identical and point to your WP installation folder (where wp-settings.php etc. are located). The home value can be different if you have an .htaccess redirect in place to send requests for home to siteurl. Or is it the other way around? I’m not sure now 🙁 Well, make them the same, you can play with this detail later if you need to.
It’s possible some other file was corrupted and is the reason for the blank screen. In your wp-config.php file define WP_DEBUG as true. The statement is usually just above the /* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */ comment. This will display error messages instead of a blank screen, giving you an idea to what the problem is.
