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I just installed CiviCRM for the first time on a test Wordpress installation for checking out CiviCRM. I followed the instructions at https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Installing+CiviCRM+for+WordPress and used civicrm-4.7.10-wordpress.zip. For some reason, when running: http://{wordpress install directory}/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=civicrm-install, the database part of the form is populated with the Wordpress database. I created a clean, empty MySQL database and tried to enter it. When I pressed the Check Requirements button, it replaced the database name with my Wordpress database name. Everything works, but I really wanted to have the Wordpress tables and CiviCRM tables in separate databases for future site management. Is there a way, after the fact, to point to the database I want? I can easily export the CiviCRM tables and import them into the clean database.

Thanks for any help here and sorry if this is simple - this is my first day working with CiviCRM.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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OK. I was able to fix it by

  1. Directly editing wp-content/uploads/civicrm/civicrm.settings.php to point to the new clean civicrm-only DB.
  2. Exporting the civicrm tables only from my original wordpress DB.
  3. Importing the exported civicrm tables into the new, blank civicrm-only DB.
  4. Dropping the civicrm tables from the original wordpress DB so it is wp-only.

All seems to be working, but it seems like I should have been able to easily set this up with the install script, which seemed to override anything that I put in for the CiviCRM DB by the WordPress DB.

All looks OK. For the more experienced CiviCRM folks, can there be any gotchas here?

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I'll add this as an answer - The Recheck requirements button resets the DB credentials. I expect this happened between testing when we implemented defaulting to using the WP Database and the credentials in wp-config.php.

In any case, this needs to be fixed. Issue - https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-19279

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  • Interesting. I "almost" installed the LTS version 4.6.20, in which case then I wouldn't have had the issue. Glad to help you shake out 4.7.x ;) As a s.w developer, I know how easy it is to introduce unintended side effects. Thanks for getting this ironed out.
    – Karl Rudnick
    Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 14:29
  • We'd love your help. github.com/civicrm/civicrm-wordpress/pull/87 is the PR that made the installer changes in the Wordpress specific repo and this PR is the core one that matches - github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/6926 We had tested this at the time, so the changes may have been introiduced, later, but there are a small set of files we need to go through. I expect the issue to be in install/civicrm.php or install/index.php
    – Kevin Cristiano
    Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 16:07
  • I really don't have time to dig into the code, but I will offer one clue that may help understand the problem. For both the WP and CiviCRM databases, i have the same user and password. Only the database names are different and the Recheck button kept changing the name (at least).
    – Karl Rudnick
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 1:07

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