Contents

Chapter 7. Importing From Another Subscription System
PrevNext

Where the Old Data Is Kept, and When It Is Deleted

The old site's data includes your customers' names, email addresses and, usually, their password hashes. While you import from a dump, PaddleSubs keeps a copy of it on your server:

  • the dump itself, and for a .sql.gz file its unpacked copy, in the paddlesubs-import folder inside your site's temporary folder (the Path to Temp Folder in System → Global Configuration → Server, usually tmp);

  • the temporary tables the dump is loaded into, in your site's database. Their names start with your site's table prefix followed by psx and six letters and digits, such as jos_psx3f9a1c_.

Importing from a live database copies nothing: the wizard reads the old tables where they are, and keeps the login only in your session.

Click Finish and delete the loaded data at the end of the wizard to delete the dump, its unpacked copy and the temporary tables straight away.

If the wizard is left part-way, because the tab was closed or your session ended, PaddleSubs deletes them once they have been left alone for 24 hours: the next time the PaddleSubs - Access subscription lifecycle task runs (see PaddleSubs - Access subscription lifecycle(task)), or the next time anyone opens the import page. A dump counts from when it was uploaded or copied into the folder, so a file you copy in yourself is not deleted at once because it is an old file. An import that was still in progress shows Failed under Previous imports once its data is deleted, because it can no longer continue; upload the dump again to import it. An import worked on in the last 24 hours keeps its data.

Warning

PaddleSubs closes the paddlesubs-import folder to visitors with .htaccess and web.config files, which Apache and IIS obey. nginx ignores them. If your site runs on nginx and its temporary folder is inside the web root, deny access to it in the server configuration, for example:

location ^~ /tmp/ {
    deny all;
}

or move the temporary folder outside the web root in Global Configuration. To check, open https://your-site/tmp/paddlesubs-import/index.html in a browser: it must be refused, not show a blank page.

To clean up by hand, delete the .sql and .sql.gz files in the folder, and drop the tables whose names start with your table prefix followed by psx, for example in phpMyAdmin.

On this page