Posted by: Jabo
Posted on: 2007-10-07 18:26:00
I was left a website after the owner passed away. It is powered by phpBB. The website in question is www.buggynews.com. I don't even know how to edit the front page. Can someone tell me where to start please.
Posted by: rlparker
Posted on: 2007-10-07 18:33:00
In reply to:I was left a website after the owner passed away. ... Can someone tell me where to start please.
Well, you will have some learning to do, to be sure, but "first things first".
Do you have all the account credentials for this site? By that I mean:
1) DH Account user name and Password
2) Dmain/site FTP or shell login user and password
3) PhpBB Admin user name password
Unless you have all those things, things like "changing the front page" or modifying the site in anyway will not be possible, so yo need to start there. Once you have all that sorted, you can proceed.
--rlparker
Posted by: Jabo
Posted on: 2007-10-08 03:37:00
Thank you the reply.
Yes, the wife gave me all passwords. I have been to all the accounts already, just not sure what to do first.
I am at 91% disk space and I don't renew til Feb of 2008. DH can't add diskspace so they told I could start by zipping home/xxxxxxx/backup/archives (about 15gig) but I don't even know how to do that.
Posted by: rlparker
Posted on: 2007-10-08 04:54:00
In reply to:I am at 91% disk space and I don't renew til Feb of 2008.
Wow! That's pretty amazing; I visited your site and I'm surprised that you are using that much space. 
In reply to:DH can't add diskspace so they told I could start by zipping home/xxxxxxx/backup/archives (about 15gig) but I don't even know how to do that.
Well thats not gonna be *that* simple, as you can't just zip the whole directory (it's too big). Does home/xxxxxxx/backup/archives have subdirectories beneath it?
The general process for backing up is described pretty well on the DreamHost wiki, but you won't be able to throw that whole 15GB into a single zip or tarball, so you will have to develop another methodology (which is why I asked the question above)
--rlparker
Posted by: Lensman
Posted on: 2007-10-08 08:37:00
One thing to remember is that we're expected to get disk upgrades "soon". Switching over to a Happy Hosting plan might be a speedier alternative.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Jabo
Posted on: 2007-10-08 18:09:00
OK, here is the deal. All of those files are back up files everyday since Aug 31st at about 14 gig for each day. How far back do I need to keep these for? I can see keeping a week, but do I really need a month+? How far back should I keep them and how can I delete them?
Thank You!
Posted by: monkeyboy7706
Posted on: 2007-10-09 11:40:00
Dreamhost automatically back up anyway, these can be accessed at /home/xxx/.snapshot the furthest these go back though is two weeks.
see http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Snapshot_data_restoration
The backups you have are probably a bit extreme. If everythng is working you could probably just remove all the backups that are there.
SQL databases are also backed up by DH and can be accessed via the mysql section of the panel
$97 DISCOUNT DISCOM97, Double bandwidth or disk DISCOMX2BWor DISCOMX2SPACE (worth $119.40pa). More codes
Posted by: Jabo
Posted on: 2007-10-09 12:41:00
They are being stored for 20 days, then they go to the archives section, still taking up 14-15 gig per file. I don't know what Steve (the person who passed away) did to keep the disk space down. When I took over a couple of weeks ago I was only at 72%. He was doing something... I just don't know what.
you wrote:
Dreamhost automatically back up anyway, these can be accessed at /home/xxx/.snapshot
Can you be a little more specific? What would the whole http be?
Thank you!
Posted by: Jabo
Posted on: 2007-10-09 13:22:00
OK, I'm in, but is it ok to delete these? They start from Aug 31 and go every day until yesterday. Can I delete oll of September?
Posted by: artgeek
Posted on: 2007-10-09 14:04:00
Hi, from reading through this thread I think you are safe getting rid of those full backups. Save the most recent one, if you are nervous. Then, consider finding the cron job that is making daily backups and stop it.
Dreamhost makes incremental backups of your databases. Go to goodies, mySQL in the panel. There is a "restore DB" button you could use.
Your database seems really large. You might want to clean it out a bit, get it to a more reasonable size.
Good luck.
Posted by: pgp_protector
Posted on: 2007-10-09 17:20:00
One other thing you can do.
Download the Oldest and save it off site.(Think of it as your master)
Clean up the others except for the last day or so.
Then every so often if there's nothing wonky with the site, save (archive) the current backup & delete the rest.