Product images not showing after migration of magento website

Question

Hello friends,

I currently migrated my magento website to a different server, and here's the process I used:

1) made a dump of the database.
2) copied all the system files from the FTP to my hard drive.
3) emptied the VAR folder
4) emptied the media cache folders
5) replaced the strings in the SQL dump from http://www.oldsite.com to http://www.newsite.com
6) restored the database on the new server
7) modified the local.xml file to suit the new database host, login and password.
8) uploaded the system files to the new server

Everything seems to work fine, except for the fact that the product images are not being displayed on the frontend for some reason.

For example, here's a path from an image that was supposed to be showing, which I got through firebug:

http://www.newsite.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/113x113/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/_/1_9.jpg
When I search for the path of the image the site is supposed to show in the FTP, the file is actually there. I can download it and display it on my computer. I don't know why this is happening. It doesn't make any sense to me.

this /media/catalog/product/cache/ was generated by the system, because I erased it myself before uploading the site, so I guess it isn't a cache related issue.
Well, I described the issue the best I could. I hope you can help me out, thanks!

EDIT:
Hmm, it turns out the problem was the freakin .htaccess file inside the media folder!! wow, so much trouble over one little file! Removed the file -> Problem solved!

Answer 1

Ok, since everything checked out with the base URL, my next suggestion is a migration path option if you have cPanel on the old server, and since most do, this should help:

1. Create a full backup of the account using cPanel. This will create a tar.gz of the entire account.
2. Download the tarred backup to your computer and unzip.
3. Find home_dir.tar - this is what contains your HTML root information. You can either upload this directly to the server and untar there using SSH, or do it on your local computer and upload.
4. Find the SQL folder in the untarred backup. There should be a dump of your database there. Use source to put that information into a new database.
5. On the server, delete use_cache.ser and change config information for the new database.
6. Your .htaccess should have come over in the home_dir.tar, but make sure that it's correct per our other question

Once that's done, you should be fully functional, unless you need to make changes in the database base_url for the new server.

Answer 2

"2) copied all the system files from the FTP to my hard drive."

This one makes me a bit suspecting. Magento has case-sensitive folders in the media folder. There would be, for instance, an 'a' folder and an 'A' folder in the same location.

If you downloaded your files unarchived (file by file) via FTP to a Windows machine, this would cause a conflict and would omit up to half your images.

Answer 3

Just in case anyone else has the same problem, removing the .htaccess in the media folder did the trick. I don't know if that's the best possible solution though! Thanks!

Answer 4

The .htaccess file removal was the final step that allowed me to display images, but I completed several more prior to attempting this which seemed to contribute to the success. I've compiled all of the steps required in my latest blog post.