The complete and total loss of your web host provider (WebHostPlus in my case) does have its advantages: it gives you a clean slate, a void, from where you can start over.
So I did:
*Set up a replica on my PowerBook G4 of everything I had running earlier so I can easily restore and sync on the DutchNet VPS when it becomes available.
*Restored all databases (yes, I do have a daily backup ftp-ed to my local host) and cleaned them up:
**renamed them according to a consistent naming convention;
**UTF-8 the blogs;
**dropped the ones I do not need.
*Configured MediaWiki’s LocalSettings.php so that they all run from a shared directory, using different databases and settings for each separate wiki.
*Find and restore lost images (oops, did not back them up in a single directory; images scattered over several folders on my Mac; Wiki images from others still te recover…).
All this and more took me the larger part of this week.
