So my plan is to eventually migrate my website DonTai.com from Doteasy to Site5. I’ll use Drupal on Site5. Originally I wanted to get Drupal running on Site5, and then change my domain registrar. This way I don’t get any downtime on my site, not that this matters.
Interestingly, using Fantastico it was very easy to create a Drupal web site in my root directory. Fine. Unknown to me is the fact that the Drupal site is configured to http://dontai.com, which still points to my original site on Doteasy. I therefore cannot get to the new Drupal site using my domain name.
text-based Drupal admin logon screen
So what to do? I get on the Site5 forum to find out how I can use my IP address to get to my site. No luck. I talk to Joslyn on LiveHelp at Site5 and she says http://ipaddress/~loginid. Ok, this gets me to a text based Drupal login screen. I try to login with my Drupal admin ID and password and I get a 404 file not found error.
original error 404 file not found screen when I tried to login
That’s not so great. I step through with Jocelyn, who says I should go back to Drupal and ask around on the forums, or put a trouble ticket into Site5 and a senior tech will look at it. So I open a trouble ticket as she suggested, and bid her a “Good Night”.
Hmmm. Today I get an email response from Site5 saying that I need to change my domain registrar first, or Drupal will not work. I get on the forums and search. Of course others have had this same problem.
Graphics based Drupal admin logon screen
A possible solution, they say, is to go into your sites/default/settings.php and change your $base_url to the URL you want. I found mine was set to http://dontai.com. Fine, this makes sense. I copy this code line, comment out the original and change $base_url to http://ipaddress/~myID. Happily, I now get the graphics based Drupal admin screen. Unfortunately when I log on with my admin id and password I still get an error 404 file not found message.
second error 404 file not found message
I think I’ll start the process of moving my domain registrar. While this is happening, kill the Drupal install and FTP my original site to Site5 and get it working. Once I know the DNS is functioning well, then I’ll remove my index.htm file and reinstall Drupal, and hope that this will work.
I’ll still need to keep hunting on the web for answers.
Hi,
You might try before you change DNS to change the base directory variable to be:
http://ipaddress/~myID/
Sometimes having that / on the end makes all the different in the world, let me know if that does the trick without changing DNS. I’m not a daily Drupal user so wasn’t sure but I’ve seen a lot of blog software I use do that.
Let me know,
Thanks, Ben
Site5 CEO
Thanks for dropping in Ben.
No, the extra “/” at the end did not work. I’ve deleted the Drupal site from my root directory now and FTPd my static old site to my root. Now I can at least get my old site running when I change domain registrars. I’ve made a sudirectory and created a Drupal site in it, but with the same exact issues: My admin ID and password does not work and gets me a 404 file not found.
There’s nothing much about this issue on the web that I can find. Am I the only one that wants to temporarily run a Drupal site from an IP address?