Step 1: Connect and gather directory information

The first step is to make sure you have SSH access to the host machine as well as confirming that GIT is installed and available. Once you have done this you can begin by connecting to the host via SSH:

ssh SSHUSERNAME@SSHDOMAINorIP

Once connected, run this command to get the directory information that will be used later on:

pwd

This command will list the path to the current directory should be something like /home/USERNAME/

Step 2: Create directories and initialize GIT

Create the directory for your new, empty GIT repository. Replace SITENAME with the domain name for the site or whatever you want it to be:

mkdir repo/SITENAME.git

Then switch to that newly created directory and initialize GIT:

cd repo/SITENAME.git
git init --bare

Step 3: Create post-receive hook to deploy code changes

Hooks in GIT are a way to execute scripts after specific events occur. In this case we want to use the ‘post-receive’ hook. This hook runs after everything else has occurred during a GIT push.

Switch to the GIT directory’s `hooks` subdirectory

cd hooks

Create and open a file named `post-receive`

nano post-receive

This will open a nano editor within Terminal for editing the `post-receive` file.
Grab the contents of `post-receive` in this GIST and update them to match your data:

Paste the updated contents in to the nano document then save and close the document.

ctrl+o

Hit enter to confirm the file name which should be `post-receive`.

ctrl+x

Finally, set the correct permissions on the file so that it can process the requests.

chmod +x post-receive

ERROR #83893a: unable to decode JSON restore data ``. Restore halted.

Here are a couple steps you can follow to diagnose the issue:

1. Verify the source of the issue – Look in your browser’s debug console and check for something like “Uncaught TypeError: undefined is not a function”. Jump to the source of the error.  In my case it was the “.on()” function not being declared.  This is a dead giveaway that something wonky is going on with the loaded version of jQuery.
2. Check the loaded version of jQuery – Run this code in your debug console to verify the current version:

   jQuery.fn.jquery

   If that returns anything below 1.11.x you are viewing an old version of the jQuery library.  You can double check this by browsing directly to the included jquery.js file.  The URL should be something like: http://YOURSITEURL/importbuddy/js/jquery.js

3. Check the loaded version of jQueryUI Tooltip – This was another script that was loading improperly for me as well.  Browse directly to the tooltip.js file by using a URL like: http://YOURSITEURL/importbuddy/js/tooltip.js

What appears to be causing these issues is the hosting provider has a cached version of those specific files and is serving that rather than the actual files on your server.

One possible workaround is to start the ImportBuddy process and clear the site’s cache after the /importbuddy/ directory has been created during the first step of the import process but before it has restored any files.  This can be tricky since ImportBuddy will put your site in to maintenance mode once it starts so you’ll have to delete the “.maintenance” file if your hosting provider requires you to be logged in to WordPress in order to clear the cache (this is the case with GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting).  After you’ve cleared the cache, restart the import process and verify that the correct files are now showing up.

If clearing the cache does not fix it there’s a more heavy-handed fix that will work but requires editing the ImportBuddy code:

1. Change the plugin version – Changing the plugin version to a much higher number will also cause the server to not use the cached version.  You can do this by opening the ‘/importbuddy/init.php’ file on your destination server and set the version declaration to something like 55555.  Once you’ve done this, restart the ImportBuddy process and verify that the scripts are loading correctly.

1. Uses wget to download the latest version of WordPress. (http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz)
2. Unzips the .tar.gz and .tar to a /wordpress subdirectory using 7zip
3. Uses ROBOCOPY to move those resulting files up to the current directory and delete the unneeded /wordpress directory.
4. Deletes the .tar.gz and .tar core files.
5. Renames wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.

Save these commands in a .bat file or just run them directly in the command window from the directory you’d like to download the WordPress core files to:

wget64 http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
7z e latest.tar.gz & 7z x latest.tar
robocopy wordpress ./ /MOVE /E
del latest.tar
del latest.tar.gz
ren wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

The Ins and Outs of CSS Resets

Also, as pointed out in that article there is a Google Code hosted version of the HTML5 compliant Meyer’s CSS Reset script. The project is here:

http://code.google.com/p/reset5/

And the hosted code includes this:

[sourcecode lang=”css”]/*

HTML5 CSS Reset
Based on Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset
and html5doctor.com HTML5 Reset

Copyright (c) 2010 736 Computing Services Limited
Released under the MIT license. http://736cs.com/mit-license.php?2010

*/

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, i, center, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,
article, aside, audio, canvas, details, figcaption,
figure, footer, header, hgroup, mark, menu, meter, nav,
output, progress, section, summary, time, video {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-size: 100%;
vertical-align: baseline;
background: transparent;
}

body {
line-height: 1;
}

article, aside, dialog, figure, footer, header,
hgroup, nav, section, blockquote {
display: block;
}

nav ul {
list-style: none;
}

ol {
list-style: decimal;
}

ul {
list-style: disc;
}

ul ul {
list-style: circle;
}

blockquote, q {
quotes: none;
}

blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
content: ”;
content: none;
}

ins {
text-decoration: underline;
}

del {
text-decoration: line-through;
}

mark {
background: none;
}

abbr[title], dfn[title] {
border-bottom:1px dotted #000;
cursor:help;
}

/* tables still need ‘cellspacing="0"’ in the markup */
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
border-spacing: 0;
}

hr {
display: block;
height: 1px;
border: 0;
border-top: 1px solid #ccc;
margin: 1em 0;
padding: 0;
}

input[type="submit"], input[type="button"], button {
padding: 0 !important;
margin: 0 !important;
}

input, select, a img {
vertical-align: middle;
}[/sourcecode]