tool to switch domains on a forum

[ub3x]

Last night i had to do a whole bunch of work after a friend's domain registration expired while he wasn't paying attention.

The domain he originally had was freehostingtalk.com . The domain was registered with stargate inc. But while he wasn't paying attention, the domain's registration expired, and the only option he has is to pay upwords of $140 to get the domain back.

So, he went out and registered freehostingtalk.net . But when he tried to login at his board, it just malfunctioned because everything was configured to use the .com domain.

So, after an hour or so of looking around .php files trying to find the where the setting to change the domain exists, i found that it exists inside of the mysql database, on the SETTING table.

I forget the exact resource, but know it exists in the setting table.

Now... If you ask me, I'd say important variables such as system directory, domain, cookie domain, cookie user, and everything but actual content should exist inside a .php file on the server, that can be easily modified in case of emergency. But, because it doesn't work this way, it requires lots of work from the board administrator.

But, i believe somebody should write a php script that will search en entire database for a given value, and replace it with with another value. I do believe a feature exists in the admiin cp, but the admin cp was not accessable to me during this time.

Thanks.