[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #41947: upload_path wrong after server move

[WordPress Trac]

#41947: upload_path wrong after server move
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 Reporter:  steevithak    |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General       |    Version:  4.8.2
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                |
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 I recently moved a Wordpress 4.8.2 site from one server to another. The
 Domain name did not change. I moved the site by copying the files to the
 new server. The database did not move, it remained on the same, remote
 server.

 After the move the site exhibited problems related to the upload directory
 path and was spuriously creating empty upload directories in the wrong
 place. If the spurious upload directories were deleted, they reappeared
 again within minutes.

 On the original server, websites were in a directory path like this:

 /var/www/whatever.com/www

 On the new server, website paths were only slightly different, like so:

 /var/www/whatever.com/html

 I eventually discovered (by checking the wp-admin/options.php page) that
 the upload_path was still pointing to the path used on the old server
 (i.e. "/var/www/whatever.com/www/wp-content/uploads"). This incorrect
 value was apparently leading Wordpress to try to recreate the upload
 directory and subdirectories along the old, now non-existant path.

 After manually changing the upload_path value to match the correct
 location on the new server, everything started working ok again. None of
 the server migration guides provided in the wordpress docs warn about this
 problem or mention the symptoms or how to detect that a change is needed,
 or tell you how to reach the options.php page where the problem can be
 diagnosed and fixed. For example, here's the best documentation I could
 find on moving a wordpress site:

 https://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

 So it seems there are two possible bugs here and I'm not sure which is
 valid and needs to be fixed.

 Possibility 1: Wordpress core should adjust the upload path automatically
 when the site is moved and failure to do so is a bug.

 Possibility 2: There's some valid reason why Wordpress can't detect the
 change or update the upload_path value automatically and this not a code
 bug but an unfortunately pitfall of moving Wordpress sites. In this case,
 I think we're just dealing with a Wordpress documentation bug in that the
 migration document fails to warn about this problem or describe the fix
 for it.

 One simple fix might be to make the upload_path visible in the admin
 general settings page where the other paths are found as this is the first
 place I looked when I began to suspect the problem. It took a little
 googling to find out there were more settings that are only accessible on
 the hidden options.php page.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/41947>
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