Hi all
I am not server setup savvy at all and specifically use XAMPP because it will install everything for me without me having to know what the heck is going on. Thus, please don't assume I have any clue when you tell me to copy this or move that or enable so and such and please go easy on me on that front...
So the issue is this... I installed XAMPP a few years back and have been using it since. No clue what version, just whichever was the current version back then. I am not entirely sure whether I installed MySQL or Maria but I'm almost definite it was MySQL. Fast forward a few years and I am now running OSX Mojave. Suddenly my Manager-OSX app no longer shows any text on any of the buttons, making it very hard to use considering I just returned to this system after just over a year away using a PC. So I installed the latest version of the installer and installed it 7.2.12.
I didn't uninstall anything beforehand but just made a copy of my htdocs folder. After I installed XAMPP the app worked as normal again with the buttons now displaying text again. Yeay. localhost/phpmyadmin still showed my old database so all was good so far only localhost/ redirected me to localhost/dashboard/. I then moved over my old index.php and wp-config.php files and now localhost/ prompts me to install WordPress. This is the part that confuses me... if localhost/phpmyadmin still shows my old database with all my tables and data intact and if my localhost/wp-config.php is still using the same "root" user and blank password as before, trying to access the same database as before, why is it not telling me that it can't access the database but instead telling me to install WordPress?
To the best of my reasoning it would be that my old database is still stored somewhere but the new installation of XAMPP installed MariaDB to somewhere else and now localhost/ and localhost/phpmyadmin/ are using two completely separate databases. This is the only thing that makes sense to me... only, why didn't the XAMPP installation make phpmyadmin point to the database location that it is using?
Anyway, so I can simply setup WordPress and begin my site anew since I was able to export my WordPress tables from phpmyadmin but.... my mind is in a flat spin here... I am accessing WordPress from the same folder as before and all the files (images, plugins etc) will be in the same place as before only my database will be someplace else.... some place where phpmyadmin is NOT pointing to. So what I would like to know is how to do one of two things:
1. Make XAMPP use the old database that has everything already where it should be OR
2. understand where XAMPP is now storing my tables since it's clearly not storing it in the same place as the old one or else it will have picked up the old one, wouldn't it?
Basically, I was happy with what I had but had to upgrade because the XAMPP app was not compatible with Mojave. Now I just want to get back to where I was when I woke up this morning. That's it. I just want to go to localhost/ and see the WordPress website that was there before the XAMPP upgrade. What do I do?
Thanks in advance