It’s one of those things .. I wish I was cloned!

I have two online projects currently taking a lot of my time. One of them is the attempting to consolidate the blogs on my network into a smaller structure. I have been working on the “Battling-Series” of blogs first.

What I would like to do is move each of my “Battling” blogs into a subfolder location of an entirely new domain. It’s easy enough to transfer domains to another location on the same server …

How I was Moving Blogs To Another Domain Subfolder

1) Backup/FTP Files of old blog to local computer
2) Backup MySQL database
3) Options/General/ and change both the WordPress address (URL): and Blog address (URL): to the new URL
4) Update (and you will get booted out)
5) Restore/FTP all the files of the old blog to the new location
6) Login/Options/Permalink and update!

* Generally – in most cases that works. Here’s the problem.

When I created the MySQL database for the original blog, if I named the account (as an example) as “stress1” and it was created in my server account “stress” which is where Battling-Stress.com residess .. then the cPanel created a MySQL database know as stress_stress1. MySQL databases are kind of below all of the accounts on a server and available to everybody. I guess that’s why they associate both the account and the name because well .. let’s face it – if everybody had a MySQL database called wordpress there would be lots of conflicts!

And, if my new location account is called “health” … although I want a new database called “health_stress1” .. the blog will still work adequately using “stress_stress1” database in my health account.

* But – what if I want to delete “stress” account?

My initial plan was to keep all the extra domains ‘live’ for at least another year, to the end of September 2008. This way, the new blog should be well on its way to being a stand alone blog. When the year was up, I would just delete the old account, and not renew the domain. Overall, I’d probably be saving about $500 per year just on domain renewals! Someone advised me that even if I don’t use the original domain, I should always renew these domains so I don’t ruin the ‘brand’ of “Battling-Stress” .. which, is pretty good I think (even though I am biased) . and apparently there are bulk renewal opportunities that can even make it cheaper for me to renew everything at once, once a year or for several years in advance.

But – here’s my biggest worry. In a year from now, I might just say … “Nah, no thanks! And delete the “stress” account from my server like an impulse shopper, and just do it. If I do that, then when I delete the old cPanel account – EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT also gets deleted.

That’s right – even the “stress_stress1” database that this new “health” account would be using. Everything would be deleted and I would be s.o.o.l. (sh*t out of luck)

* And that’s not all!

I’m not too talented to do this myself, and having problems getting the 301 redirect to work from a /domain/ to a /domain/subfolder/ .. Every month I have been giving sponsors a permanent link in my blog with my thank-you posts. I want the link popularity to still be good for them! Yet, the best I seem to be doing is re-routing everything back to the root. I have enough money sitting in my paypal to pay someone to do this for me .. but, with a lot of domains and blogs I want to fix, the multiple just isn’t there and I can’t afford it anymore. So – I’ve tried this 3 times already to no avail.

I have moved 2 Battling Series blogs over .. 1 small and 1 medium size.

http://Battling-Diabetes.com >> http://BattlingForHealth.com/diabetes/
http://Battling-Stress.com >> BattlingForHealth.com/stress/

I might have to try again and delete those subfolders .. and instead try it with subdomains – like..

Stress.BattlingForHealth.com
Diabetes.BattlingForHealth.com

What do you think of using subdomains instead of subfolders for blogs? I hate them personally! But, as far as I know – I think that might be the best way to transfer everything over. Plus, I can have addon domains to it where (i think) might solve my risk of deleting the only MySQL database.

It’s a learning curve when you don’t know what you are doing. Until I’m ready, in the meantime, I am reluctant to keep posting on these old sites until I’ve given up. Otherwise, I’ll have to do another export etc.

Hopefully I will fix this thing before the weekend.