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How to Perform WordPress Migration

Without Any Downtime
by Sufia Banu | Jan 24, 2019 | Migration

Are you looking to move to a new host or a new domain? There are many
reasons why you may need to migrate WordPress site, but the risks
associated with WordPress migration could make the process look daunting.
You might be worried that you could lose data, experience downtime, lose
visitors to your site and also lose rankings. But migration doesn’t have to be
a stressful experience. In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through how to
migrate WordPress site safely, without losing data or facing any downtime.

Table of Content [ hide ]

How to Do a WordPress Migration Without Hiccups?
Things to Do Before WordPress Migration
Things to Do During WordPress Migration Process
Things to Do Post WordPress Website Migration
TL;DR
If you are just looking to migrate your website quickly but without any
hiccups, you can install our WordPress migration plugin. It’ll instantly migrate
your website with zero downtime.

How to Do a WordPress Migration Without

Hiccups?
The steps that you need to take to migrate WordPress website can be divided
into three parts:

1. Pre-migration – We’ll discuss the steps you need to take before

starting to move your website.
2. During migration – We’ll show you the steps you need to take to
migrate your site.
3. Post-migration – Learn about the measures you need to take after
performing a migration.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

NOTE: In this article, we’ll show you how to move to a new hosting and a
new domain.

Things to Do Before WordPress Migration

1. Register a New Domain Name
Many of you may wish to change your domain name. There are two ways of
doing this:

One, you can purchase a domain from popular domain registrars like
NameSilo and NameCheap.
Or two, you can purchase the domain and host from the same web host
provider.

Many users choose their hosting provider as their domain name registrar but
if you ask us, NameSilo and Namecheap are a slightly cheaper option.

2. Register With a New Host

There are many WordPress hosts to choose from. If you don’t have any
specific hosting in mind, then you’ll find our post on the best WordPress
hosting providers useful. We’d like to point out a few things you need to
consider which looking for an ideal web hosting solution.
You will, of course, look for what your current hosting provider lacks which
could be anything between the responsiveness of the support team to the
security of hosted websites. Apart from this, depending on your needs and
budget, you’ll decide what sort of hosting you require – shared, managed or
VPS hosting.

In shared hosting, we find hundreds of websites sharing the same server.

This is why shared hosting is cheap. But the drawback here is that
sometimes, one website may overuse the server resources causing other
WordPress sites to suffer.

Virtual private server hosting is also known as VPS and has a similar
policy. But it offers larger disk space and more resources. It’s perfect for
WordPress websites that draw large traffic but don’t have the budget for a
dedicated hosting solution.

Managed hostings are the ideal hosting solutions. You can choose between
shared or private access. And the hosting provider takes responsibility for
managing your site. Therefore, managed hostings are much more expensive
than shared or VPS hosting.

3. Install WordPress
If you already have a WordPress website, you’d know how to install
WordPress on your newly created account. If not, there’s no need to worry.
The easiest way to do this is by selecting the one-click WordPress installer on
your hosting provider’s dashboard. For instance, in Bluehost, once you log
into your dashboard, you’ll find an Install button that’ll help you get your
WordPress installed without breaking a sweat.

One-click WordPress installer on Namecheap Hosting

4. Obtain Your FTP Details
Migrating WordPress websites entail moving all your files from one location to
another. FTP or File Transfer Protocol enables you to do just that. Given its
importance, FTP is kept protected. For the migration process, it’s necessary
to know the FTP details (FTP username, password, and host server) of your
new hosting provider. If you are on a major hosting provider and can’t find
the FTP details, you’ll find these videos on how to use FTP helpful.
Alternately, you can ask your hosting provider how to obtain your FTP
details. Make sure you note them down because you’ll need them later for
migration. If you are not sure how to work with FTP, you can learn in our
guide.

Things to Do During WordPress Migration Process

Website migration can be performed manually or with a plugin. When you are
doing it manually, there are a number of things that can go wrong. To ensure
an error-free migration, we’d recommend using a WordPress migrator plugin.
Nonetheless, we’ll show you both ways to move WordPress and you can pick
what’s convenient for you.

1. Performing WordPress Migration With a Plugin

While there are many WordPress migration plugins to opt for, choosing a
reliable one is crucial. With unreliable migration plugins you run into the
following problems:

Unsupported web host

Downtime
Incomplete migration

You are unlikely to face these challenges if you are using BlogVault. It
supports over 5,000 hosting providers ensures there is no downtime
during migration. Unlike many other migration services, BlogVault offers a
complete migration without any broken links or missing content.
Therefore, let us show you how you can perform WordPress migration with
BlogVault.

WordPress Migration Tutorial - BlogVault Feat…

Feat…
Step 1: Install and activate the BlogVault plugin. Then add your website to
the BlogVault dashboard (Note: You don’t need to add the plugin on the new
website). The plugin will immediately take a backup of your website. Proceed
to migrate by selecting the Migrate option from the dashboard.

Select Migrate on BlogVault dashboard

Step 2: Remember when we told you to keep your FTP details ready. Here’s
when you’ll need it. Enter the FTP details of your new hosting provider.
Following this, you’ll need to select the folder where your WordPress files are
going to be transferred. After that choose public_html.
 Select public_html

Step 3: On the next page, for those of you who’ve purchased a new domain
name, insert the URL of your website. Then click on Continue and the
migration process will begin.

Insert your new URL (if you have one)

Depending on the size of your website, it’ll take some time to migrate
WordPress site. Once the migration is complete, BlogVault will notify you
about it.

That’s all you have to do. Now that you have migrated your website there are
a few post-migration measures to need to take. For that jump to Things to
Do Post-Migration.

Migration can be a daunting experience but it need not

be that way. With the right kind of guide, it’s a walk in
the park (almost). 😌 CLICK TO TWEET

2. Moving WordPress site on Your Own

To manually migrate WordPress site you’ll need to execute quite a few steps.
Those are:

Download WordPress files and database

Upload WordPress files and database to new hosting
Modify the config file

Step 1: Download WordPress les and database

A WordPress website consists of files and a database. To prep your site to
transfer, you’ll download your files and database to your local system.

Downloading WordPress files: You can download the files through File
Manager (via your web host account) or an FTP client. We’ll use an FTP
client because the File Manager has limitations. For instance, if your site is
over 2GB, you can’t upload it with the File Manager.

1. Download and install Filezilla, a popular FTP client. And then enter
the FTP details of your existing website. Note: You can find FTP details
with the help of these videos or consider asking your web host.
2. After the connection between FileZilla and your website is established,
you’ll find the files on your website appear on the dashboard of the
software. Now, you’d want to download the root folder also known as
the public_html file. It’s where all your WordPress files are stored.
Simply right-click on public_html and select Download.

Right-click on public_html and then select Download

It should take a few minutes you’ll have a copy of your files on your
computer (recommended read: Pros and Cons of Storing Backups on Your
PC).

Downloading WordPress database: Hosting providers enable site owners

to download the database of their website. Just log into your hosting account
and navigate to phpMyAdmin where you’ll find an Export option.

Open phpMyAdmin and select Export

In the Export page, you are given 2 choices – Quickly or Custom export. If
you wish to export only specific tables, choosing Custom enables you to do
just that. If not, then go for the default Quick option.
 Depending on your needs, select Quick export or Custom export

By now, you’ll have a copy of both files and database. It’s time to upload
them to the new hosting account.

Step 2: Upload WordPress les and database to new hosting

Early on, we spoke of obtaining the FTP details from the new hosting. You’ll
use that to connect your site to Filezilla. In the next step, we’ll show you
how to upload files and database of your website to the new hosting account.
Uploading WordPress files:

1. On the left corner of FileZilla, there an option called File Manager.

Select that.

Click on that item at the corner of FileZilla

2. In the FileZilla File Manager, you’ll add your FTP credentials (host,
username, and password) and then take the following steps:

Under Protocol, you’ll choose FTP which is the encryption we want

to use.
Under Encryption, choose to Use explicit FTP over TLS if
available. It means that the data coming from your computer to
 your website is protected.
Under Login Type, select Normal.

After that, click on Connect.

Fill up the section, we have highlighted

If the connection is successful, you’ll see all of your files appearing in the
Remote site section of FileZilla. But if you are getting an FTP connection error
saying that it’s impossible to establish a connection to the server then
recheck your credentials. Verify with your hosting provider if you have the
correct information.

After uploading the files, it’s time to upload the database.

Uploading WordPress database:

The ways to upload database differs from one web host to another. For
instance, on FlyWheel we found that you had to log into your account and
then navigate to Advance and then Import.
 On FlyWheel navigate to Advance and then select Import

But on Bluehost, after logging in you’ll select the option MySQL Database
and then you’ll Create a New Database and Add a New User.

IMPORTANT: Remember to note down the database name, database

username and password.

Add the new user to the new database

In the next step, we’ll link the new user to the new database. Just open the
MySQL Databases page once more and scroll down to the section called
Add User To Database.
After successfully adding that user to that database, what we now need to do
is import the database we had downloaded earlier.
For that, you’d want to go to phpMyAdmin from your hosting account, then
select Import and then go ahead and import the database from your
computer.

Open phpMyAdmin and select import

Then you wait for the import to successfully finish.

Step 3. Modify the con g le

The next step in the migration process is to edit the config file. The config
files contain information about your old database. The name, username, and
password that you see on your config file are part of your old database. You
can’t use them. In the previous step, you created a new database and noted
down the details. You’ll want to replace the old details with the new one.

Go to FileZilla and navigate to public_html > wp-config.php. After

that, right-click on the PHP file and edit it.
 On FileZilla, navigate to wp-config. Do a right-click and select
Edit.

In the config file, after replacing the database name, database

username, and password with the new ones close the window.
Almost immediately a new appears asking you if you want to save the
changes. Select Yes.
 Make sure you are changing the database name, username, and password

Expert tip: Ensure that the database table prefix (which in our case is
bhwpsite) is set to the same value as the one found in phpMyAdmin. Failing
to connect the database properly could show a blank page to the visitors of
your website.

With the modification of the config file, we’ve come to the end of things to do
during WordPress migration. Now open your website on a new tab and if
everything went well, your website should look the same as before
migration.

Things to Do Post WordPress Website Migration

For those of you who’ve changed your domain names, you’ll have to let the
new database know about it.

1. Changing Domain Name

From your hosting account, go to phpMyAdmin and click on the Options
table. When it opens, you’ll see that the first two entries (siteURL & home)
are set to the previous domain name. These have to be changed to the new
domain name. And we do that by double-clicking on the URL.
 Double-click on the URL to change them

Now that we have the site URL and home URL updated, open a new tab on
your browser and open the new URL. If everything went well then your
website will load. If you are not that lucky, sometimes the new URL redirects
to the old one. This is a caching issue which you should clean right away. If
you are not sure how to do it, check our guide on how to clear WordPress
cache. Also, you can try opening the new URL in a different browser like
Safari or Firefox.

2. Testing if Things Are Okay

Earlier in the article, we said how when you are trying to move a site
manually, you may run into issue missing content, broken pages and links.
To check if you’ve managed to migrate your entire WordPress site and
haven’t left anything out, open all your published posts and pages. If it
shows that the page couldn’t be found on the server, then the migration has
failed. If your website is large with hundreds of pages, then checking all of
them is going to be impossible.

To check for broken links you can use the Chrome extension called SEO
Minion. Whatever suits you best. This has to do with the change of your URL.
Even though we changed it in the database, you are likely to experience
some hiccups. This is simply the cost of performing manual WordPress
migration.

In Conclusion
Migrating to a new web host usually entails a lot of hard work which is why if
you are doing it manually, there are good chances of making mistakes. But if
you want to make sure that everything works perfectly, use a plugin.

Try BlogVault’s WordPress Migration Service Now!

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