How to Migrate Your WordPress Site to a New Host

Migrating your WordPress setup to another host would appear to be a nightmare and not a walk in the park, but by knowing the right stuff. Then, re-hosting such websites will consume less time and effort. It’s just understood that when moving to a new hosting provider or upgrading to a more robust plan, the existing setup ought to be quite clear as well. Below, this article explains how to migrate a WordPress website to a different host in a simple yet effective manner, so that no data gets lost and unforeseen problems avoid visitors along the way.

Why Migrate Your WordPress Site?

Now, before launching into the technicalities let us take some time to understand the reasons behind migrating your WordPress site:

1. Better Performance: a new host may provide superior performance, with higher speed and improvement in the uptime.
2. Cost Efficiency: Perhaps you find a host that gives that at the same or lower price.
3. Improved Support: If the current host fails to give quality customer service, then a possible better support by switching the hosts is an option.
4. Scalable Infrastructure: With the increase of traffic, resource allocation, and bigger databases, scaling together with the site becomes inevitable at certain points.
5. Security: A more secure hosting company with SSL certificates and up-to-date software can save your site and all its data.

Pre-Migration Checklist:

Before starting the process of migration, you should probably be prepared for the following things:

1. Select New Hosting Provider: Choose a hosting provider that is suitable for your needs at present and future. Research hosts for WordPress-focused solutions (shared, VPS, or managed WordPress hosting).
2. Backup Your Website: The backup of the website should be done to ensure restoration in case something breaks during the migration.
3. Domain Settings Check: If your domain is registered with your old host, ensure you know how to transfer or point your domain to the new host once the migration occurs.
4. Make a List of All Installed Plugins & Themes: Jot down all the plugins and themes that you have running now for potential reinstallation.
5. Confirm Access to FTP or cPanel. Get access to the control panel of both your existing host as well as that of your new hosting provider, cPanel, Plesk, etc. in order to complete the migration.

Now with everything in place, it is time to get down to the actual migration process.

Step 1: Backup Your WordPress Site

Back up your entire site in advance so that it is available in case things go wrong. The first step in migrating a WordPress site is backing up. There are mainly two methods of backing up a WordPress site: either manually or using a plugin.

With A Backup Plugin

Beginners who are new to WordPress migration may find it easier and more effective to use a backup plugin to create an all-inclusive backup on their site. These are some backup plugins that are well known:

• UpdraftPlus
• Backup
• Duplicator
• All-in-One WP Migration

So let’s say we do this tutorial with UpdraftPlus:

1. Install the UpdraftPlus plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
2. Activate the plugin and go to Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups.
3. Press Backup Now to start the backup process.
4. Select all the options to back up the entire site including database, plugins, themes, and uploads.
5. Wait for the backup process to complete and download the backup files to your computer. Backups including the database and all your WordPress files should be present.

Manual Backup

If you are more experienced, you may want to be a little more old-school and perhaps download your website files and database and back them up manually.

1. Backup WordPress Files:

   • Connect to your site via FTP (using an FTP client like FileZilla) or through your hosting control panel’s file manager.
   • Download all files from your WordPress installation directory (usually public_html) to your local computer.
2. Backup WordPress Database:
   • Log into your current host’s cPanel and open phpMyAdmin.
   • Select your WordPress database.
   • Click Export and choose the Quick export method, then click Go to download the database as a .sql file.

Step 2: Set Up Your New Hosting Environment

Now you can set up a new hosting environment.

1. Sign Up with the New Hosting Provider: Choose a hosting provider and sign up for a new plan. Most hosts will offer easy WordPress installations during sign-up, but don’t worry; we’ll cover the process if you need to install WordPress manually.

2. Access cPanel or FTP: After signing up, log in to the new hosting provider’s cPanel or FTP account. You will use this to upload your website files and database.

3. Set Up the Domain (Optional): If you’re also transferring your domain to the new host, you’ll need to point your domain’s DNS settings to the new server’s nameservers. This may take a few hours to propagate across the internet.

Step 3: Install WordPress on New Host:

If your new hosting provider has a one-click install for WordPress, this is simple. If not, then follow the below process for a manual installation: One Click Install: Most hosts, like Bluehost, SiteGround, and DreamHost, offer one-click WordPress installations. To do this: 1. Log in to your cPanel. 2. Check for a section with something like “Website” or “Install WordPress”. 3. Click the WordPress icon and follow the prompts to install it on your new hosting account. Manual Installation: If you need to do a manual install, please follow these steps:

1. Go to wordpress.org and get the latest version of WordPress.
2. Use FTP or the file manager of your hosting provider to upload WordPress files to the new server.
3. In cPanel under MySQL Databases, prepare a MySQL database and user. The user must have full permissions on that database.
4. Submit wp-config. php document to the new account detail, that is, the new database name, username, password, and host. 5. On visiting the URL of your new website, WordPress will guide you through the rest of the installation.

Step 4: Upload Your Website Files and Database to the New Host

Once you have WordPress setup on the new server, you can upload your website files and databases.

Uploading Website Files

1. Connect to your new host via FTP or the file manager within cPanel.
2. Upload the previously backed up website files (from the wp-content folder, plugins, themes, etc.) into the new installation directory of WordPress on the new host.

Importing the Database

1. Log into phpMyAdmin at your new hosting account and select the database you previously created.
2. Click on Import, choose the .sql database backup file from your old host, and upload it.

Step 5: Update wp-config.php File

Following the upload of files and database of your website, the next thing you will do is update the wp-config.php file to work with the new settings depending on your new database.

1. Open wp-config.php in the file manager of the new host or FTP client.
2. Enter this in new database:

php

Copy code

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘new_database_name’);

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘new_database_user’);

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘new_database_password’);

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

The existing database name, username, and password must be changed to the right values provided from your new hosting account.

Step 6: Test the Website on the New Host

It is necessary first to test your site on the new hosting service before making the final DNS switch.

1. Edit your hosts file (on your local computer) so that when the address is accessed, it is routed to your new host’s IP address. At this point, you will be able to see the site on the new server without changing DNS settings globally.
2. Visit your website and test it thoroughly for images, links, etc., and any other plug-ins or functionalities that would need to be tested.

Step 7: Change DNS Settings

When you are confident that all is well at the new host, turn off your domain and point it to the new server.

1. Log into the domain registrar (that’s where you bought the domain) and alter the DNS records.
2. Now replace the old nameservers with the new nameservers of your host. In this way, your domain will now point to the new hosting provider.
3. Allow up to 24-48 hours for DNS propagation to complete.

Step 8: Final Steps

After propagating your DNS, it needs you to:

1. Check Site Performance: Test your site again to be sure that the entire stuff is working as it should.
2. Updating and Re-installation of Plugins/Themes: Ensure that each of your plugins and themes has been updated into the latest versions.
3. Backup Your Site Once Again: After the migration, take a new backup of your website, as it may require you to restore it later.

Conclusion

Moving WordPress to a new host can appear to be pretty tough, but with proper planning and intricacy, the task can be very easy. It has its steps; that is, take a backup of your site, create the new hosting environment, upload your files and database into it, and lastly, update your DNS settings. If you follow the steps in this guide, it will get you successfully migrated over to your new WordPress home with minimal downtime and no data loss, guaranteed.