Moving Your Drupal 'files' Folder - Dev to Live Sites

When I was rebuilding www.jeffgeerling.com in Drupal, I decided to use the testing domain new.jeffgeerling.com. This presented me with a challenge, once I started working a bit more on the site, as I set up imagecache, the file system, the favicon, the logo, internal images in posts, images inserted into blocks, etc., into my /sites/new.jeffgeerling.com/files directory.

If I simply renamed the directory to 'jeffgeerling.com' and went live, I'd end up with tons of 404 errors. Currently, there's no easy way to switch the location of your files directory in Drupal. Lacking an easy method, it's time to get your hands dirty with a little SQL (I entered the following commands via phpMyAdmin, since my host doesn't yet allow SSH access):

• Update the files table (which is used by the system as well as imagecache):
  • UPDATE `files` SET `filepath` = REPLACE(`filepath`, `sites/OLDDOMAIN/files/`, `sites/NEWDOMAIN/files/`);
• Update the boxes table (which is used for all the block content):
  • UPDATE `boxes` SET `body` = REPLACE(`body`, `sites/OLDDOMAIN/files/`, `sites/NEWDOMAIN/files/`);
• Update the node_revisions table (all the node content is in here... you'll need to update both the body and the teaser fields):
  • UPDATE `node_revisions` SET `body` = REPLACE(`body`, `sites/OLDDOMAIN/files/`, `sites/NEWDOMAIN/files/`);
  • UPDATE `node_revisions` SET `teaser` = REPLACE(`teaser`, `sites/OLDDOMAIN/files/`, `sites/NEWDOMAIN/files/`);
• Update the users table 'picture' value (if you're using user pictures):
  • UPDATE `users` SET `picture` = REPLACE(`picture`, `sites/OLDDOMAIN/files/pictures/`, `sites/NEWDOMAIN/files/pictures/`);

Now make sure you clear your cache tables (I just used 'Clear caches' in my Admin menu), then empty your watchdog table (TRUNCATE `watchdog`;) and look for any 404 errors. If you find a bunch, there might be another field you need to update with your new filepath.

Hopefully Drupal core will be better able to handle file moving in version 7—I haven't studied that too much yet, but I've heard files will be treated more as 'first class citizens.' Until then, you can either have fun with the above MySQL queries, or you could use private file handling (which uses a path such as /system/files, and allows your file path to be whatever you'd like).

(One other solution is to set up a folder like /sites/sitename instead of /sites/sitename.com, and set up a symlink to the /sites/sitename folder... that's okay, I guess... but not ideal. It would be best if Drupal could handle this stuff (path aliasing, etc.) out of the box.).