[jadkar]

Well.....thanks for your quick reply, this is driving me nuts. I'll try and explain it a little differently....


PROD Environment = .php5 / MySQLi (file extension I'm using for php5 = .php5)

DEV Environment = .php4 / MySQL (file extension I'm using for php4 = .php)


OK, So I built DEV using a different download package from vBulletin. Meaning I specified the files to have a ".php" extension. I did this because my DEV hosting service was having problems with ".php5", and I knew that was because they are using php4.

With that said I knew my first issue was going to be the PROD didn't match DEV, which is bad in itself; but I forged forward.

I was able to get DEV up and running just fine. I even loaded all my custom templates and styles from PROD with no problem. So as it stood everything looked good in DEV, except I had a completely "empty" forum, no users, forums, threads, etc. (remember this is a fresh install on DEV)

I figured my next step is to import the entire database from PROD onto my DEV MySql instance. Now I'm completely new to this product (including MySQL & MyphpAdmin) and exporting and importing databases was a learning expirence in itself. I used "BigDump.php to get the task done.

Next the database from PROD is loaded into DEV, time to test it out. I bring up DEV and bam!! Everything looks good!! Forum structure is there exactly from PROD, my style still looks preserved. Problem comes when I click on any link. I get a "page can't be displayed - IE error" when I look at the page that's trying to load I see my problem. All the pages that are trying to load have an extension of ".php5" on the end of them. I figure..Damn! this must be because the database was from my ".php5" installation from PROD. You see, I had no idea what kind of data was in the vBulletin database. I was under the impression it's only data like thread content, users, etc. Obviously "whole" page links are kept in there because it's bringing over ".php5" extensions.

So this problem seems easy.... just bring open my 23meg SQL dump from PROD in WordPad and do a "find/replace" on ".php5" replacing with ".php". I do this successfully. Now my entire dumped database from PROD has NO mention of .php5 EVERYTHING has been replaced with .php.

I reload the database back into DEV and get interesting results. Now all my page links work however my top nav bar is missing, and it seems all the "GUI" button graphics are gone, and a few other strange things. At this point I maybe messing with something that can't be done.

Basically all I'm trying to do is take ALL my data from PROD and move it to DEV but the versions on each are different and I'm wondering is there a "documented" way of doing this correctly.

Again, I greatly appreciate your quick reply and any further help you or anyone else can give would be greatly appreciated.

Here is a link to my DEV forum where you can see first hand the strange results.....

http://tj.jadkarmotors.com/TJForum/index.php


This is what PROD looks like....
http://www.tuner-junction.com

Thanks again