How to switch Conftool from current year's conference database to the next year's

• Log in to https://mysql.davie.textdrive.com/ using the usual username/password for adho administration.

• Select the current year's conftool database (for the purposes of this example, dh2007)

• Select "operations" from the tab across the top of the mysql display area and, in the "Copy database to:" text-box, fill in the name to be used for next year's conftool mysql database (for the purposes of this example, dh2008), check the box that says "Add Auto-Increment Value" (so that we don't accrue duplicate user id numbers, for example) and hit "Go"

• Log out and back in again to make sure the new database is loaded in the php interface

• Select the new database (dh2008) in the left-hand navigation pane

• Go row by row through the new database, and empty tables that show as having zero records in this illustration:

Only empty those tables that show as having zero records in the illustration above: other information is important to carry over from year to year (like usernames and passwords for logging in, topics of interest to individuals, etc. It is also important to continue naming the databases on the model of dh2007 and dh2008, so that php pages developed outside of conftool for gathering aggregate information from past conferences can predict the name of the databases to be queried.

Finally, you need to ssh into www.digitalhumanities.org, cd conftool, cd etc, and edit this line in conftool.conf.php

// [db/database] is the name of the database on the DBMS where
// the conftool stores its data.
$ctconf['db/database'] = 'dh2008';

This ensures that the conftool installation at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/conftool will be using the new database, not the old one.

-- Main.JohnUnsworth - 14 Sep 2007