Title: Missing Database Last modified: August 30, 2016 --- # Missing Database * [RobertF](https://wordpress.org/support/users/photog/) * (@photog) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/) * I have a serious issue with my site and my webhost is pretty much useless. * Background: At one time I had a non-WP main site and a WP-based blog. The main site address was rf-photography.ca and the blog was rf-photography.ca/blog. I decided to consolidate everything under WP then setup a redirect so that people going to rf-photography.ca got to the main homepage. All the pages/posts/media was under the /blog admin. Last week I attempted to do an update to the Softaculous scripts. The update worked fine for the rf-photography.ca domain (or so I thought), but failed for the /blog domain. In doing the update, it appears the link between the main site and the /blog site has been broken. If you to to the main site URL, a WP setup screen appears. If you go to the /blog URL, the main blog page appears but trying to click on any links goes back to the WP setup screen. I am able to log into my cPanel. I am also able to log into my /blog WP Dashboard. In the dashboard, I can see all of the data that is on the site – pages, posts, photos, videos, etc. * Status: My webhost told me I would need to do a complete backup of the database, create a new database under the main rf-photography.ca domain, copy all the data from the old database into the new and set up a new master user under the new database. From that point forward, all the site admin would be done under the main domain rather than the /blog domain. * Trying to work with my webhost on the phone this morning, neither of us could find the .sql database in the cPanel File Manager. If I look at the wp-config file, it tells me the name of the database. If I look at the Databases section of my cPanel, the database is listed there. If I go into phpMyAdmin, I can drill down in the database and see all my posts. I can’t see my media assets, but perhaps those are stored somewhere else. * I may be in a position where I have to rebuild everything from scratch. I can copy/paste information from blog posts and pages. But not sure what to do about media. * Questions: Is cPanel>File Manager the right place to look for my .sql database? If not, where would it be? * Since I can’t see a section of the database that contains media assets in phpMyAdmin, are those stored somewhere else? If so, where might I find them? * Is there possibly an easier way to recreate my site than manually copying/pasting everything if I can’t find the database? * I have many hundreds of media assets on the site (112 pages according to what I see on my Dashboard), yet the database is only listed at about 95MB. This seems to indicate that the media assets are not in the main database or that the database is very highly compressed. Is either true? * Thank you in advance. Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) * Anonymous User 9588789 * (@anonymized-9588789) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519763) * Hi Robert, * Media assets – images, PDFs, videos – anything that would be uploaded – is stored in wp-content/uploads. You’ll find that folder in cPanel’s File Manager. You should see options in cPanel to compress the folder and download its contents.( Compressing it first will reduce the amount of time it takes to download.) * phpMyAdmin is used to manage your database(s), not File Manager. * To export an existing database or import a SQL file / database back up into an empty database, go to phpMyAdmin. * Click on the database you want to work with in the “Databases” section. Then, click on “Export” to download a back up of the database or “Import” to import a database back up. * It’s hard to know exactly how to solve your problem without seeing the files in front of me. I suspect the issue is related to where the wp-config.php file is located. WordPress tries to install when it cannot find wp-config.php. You may find the info here useful: * [https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory](https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory) * Thread Starter [RobertF](https://wordpress.org/support/users/photog/) * (@photog) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519766) * Thanks for the reply. * There is just one installation of WP. There’s nothing under the main rf-photography. ca, it’s all under /blog, and rf-photography.ca redirects to /blog with a bit of coding in the background to maintain the rf-photography.ca URL. Thanks for confirming that File Manager isn’t the right approach. I did discover that media isnin the Uploads folder and the database has links to that media. * I’m away from my office right now but I’ll try exporting the database. * The main problem I see in re-establishing everything under the main rf-photography. ca domain is that all of the links in my pages/posts are going to refer to rf- photography.ca/blog/…./uploads and the media will contain the same links so I’m going to have to manually change every link to media and every media URL to remove the /blog component. Is that correct? * Anonymous User 9588789 * (@anonymized-9588789) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519773) * It sounds like the .htaccess file may have been overwritten in your update (“ Last week I attempted to do an update to the Softaculous scripts”.). * The Last Modified date for the .htaccess file in File Manager should tell you. If it was changed at all, the Last Modified date will be whatever day you ran the update. * You are correct about the links, however you can use WP Migrate DB Pro to migrate databases in a way that also updates the links in the database ([deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/](http://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/)). * I have a copy of WP Migrate and have reached out to you on Facebook if you want me to help. * Anonymous User 9588789 * (@anonymized-9588789) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519781) * There is now a free version of WP Migrate DB Pro: * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/) * Thread Starter [RobertF](https://wordpress.org/support/users/photog/) * (@photog) * [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519853) * The .htaccess file didn’t get overwritten. The revision date on it is over a year old. * Apparently my web host has elevated the issue to higher level support because front line support is useless. Awaiting a response from them. Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) The topic ‘Missing Database’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [cPanel](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cpanel/) * [phpmyadmin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/phpmyadmin/) * [wp-content](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp-content/) * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 5 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [RobertF](https://wordpress.org/support/users/photog/) * Last activity: [10 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/major-website-issues-missing-database/#post-6519853) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics