Question PGV to webtrees fails

Hi all, I'm just joining the group.

I had a PGV installation on a file folder in a large website on a GoDaddy server since sometime before 2010, and for as long as I was able I kept the software up to date. It was a combination of decades of work on both my father's and mother's sides of the family, and I added a lot to it as well. It had thousands of entries. I started with 2 separate Gedcom files, one from each side of the family to make one large all-inclusive tree.

It never occurred to me that GoDaddy would stop updating the php on the server, just as it never occurred to me that I should have downloaded a gedcom file of the combined families not just once, but every time I made an update. When the site stopped working several years ago I considered just giving up on it and because it was probably lost forever, but GoDaddy assured me that eventually they were going to migrate my account to a whole new server and I'd be able to get it back. I probably did download a combined gedcom at some point but changed computers several times and had a few hard drive crashes along the way as well.

I held on to the entire broken site for several years, and just last week GoDaddy finally did the migration to a Control Panel server that includes webtrees, and I was elated to see that there was a conversion option. Today I set up webtrees in the same folder where I had the PVG folder, and after changing my php version to one that would work with the version of webtrees with the transfer wizard, I started the conversion. As you can see from the attached screenshot, I got an error message that there was no installation of PGV in the PGV folder. I tried multiple times, and also occasionally got an error message that webtrees needed to be using the same database as PGV, which is not what I understood from the instructions that they just needed to be on the same server. I do not know what version of PVG I had running last; I think it was probably 2016 or 17 when it quit working.
Should I have tried to install webtrees into the PVG folder?
I was able to download the sql of the database; is there a way to make that work?

The original GEDCOM from my mother's side has been lost in a computer crash several years ago; this old PGV installation is the only place that has all that information. I'm desperate to find a way to salvage it.
Please let me know if there is any solution for me.

Thanks in advance, Melissa

As a longshot I just looked carefully at the files in the index folder inside the PGV installation files and saw 3 files with the .ged suffix - are they the ones I've been looking for? Can upload those files to webtrees???

MelissaVT wrote:

Should I have tried to install webtrees into the PVG folder?

That would be a possibility indeed. But merely filling in the location of the PGV folder should suffice.

MelissaVT wrote:

As a longshot I just looked carefully at the files in the index folder inside the PGV installation files and saw 3 files with the .ged suffix - are they the ones I've been looking for? Can upload those files to webtrees???

Very likely yes, and surely yes you can try.
Worst thing that can happen is it won't work. But you don't know unless you try.

> As a longshot I just looked carefully at the files in the index folder inside the PGV installation files and saw 3 files with the .ged suffix - are they the ones I've been looking for? Can upload those files to webtrees???

Yes. These files (assuming they are up-to-date) contain your genealogy data.

But they are only updated if you use the "export" function in PGV.

If you didn't do this, then the files will be out-of-date, and not contain any edits you made in the system.

Do you also have a file config.php in this folder?
This is the file that the import wizard is looking for.
It contains some configuration information, and also the database connection details.

The import wizard will import this configuration information, and also the contents of your database.

BTW - the import wizard won't run if you have already created trees and/or users.

To run it again, you must first delete all trees, and all users (except your own admin account!).

Thank you!! The good news is that the files did work; the bad news is they were out of date, like 2005 out of date. When I saw it worked I upgraded to the newest version, so I don't think I'll be able to go back.

I think I'll give it another shot by installing a fresh webtrees v1.7 in the same folder as the old PVG and see if that works. Would that cause any damage to the original PVG files or database? Should I copy that entire folder as a backup somewhere else?
Even if this last effort doesn't work, at least I'll have all the old entries, and I'm over the moon about that!

Thank you all!

As I said earlier, all your genealogy data is in the database. If you have this, then your data is safe and can be recovered.

Does your web host allow you access to your database. for example using an app called phpmyadmin?

Yes I do have phpmy admin access.

I tried installing webtrees 1.7 in the original PVG folder and it didn't work;
Got this error message "PhpGedView must use the same database as webtrees."
I also tried installing it in a subfolder of the original folder and got the error message that there was no installation in the folder, although I had copied all the original files to it.

How can I get it from phpmyadmin?

Thanks!

Aha! I think I might have figured out the problem - I looked at config.php and realized it was looking for the actual old path to the database, not a relative path. Godaddy has migreated the entire website to a whole new server, so now I have to figure out the new path to the database. Getting closer I hope!

Nope that didn't work either, the installs are indeed on the same server.

> the installs are indeed on the same server.

Can you give us some more details.

What is the folder/path of the webtrees installation.
What is the folder/path of the PGV installation.