How to migrate a WordPress Website to a new host

Manually migrate a WordPress site

Manually migrating your site is a little more complicated, but it gives you more control over the process.

1. Backup/download your WordPress site data

The first step to manually migrating your WordPress site is to backup/download all your site data — regardless of how small or large it is. The migration process could cause you to lose website data, which in turn could damage your site.

While backing up your site, data should already be a security best practice. It is also a critical component of the data transfer process.

There are several plugins you can use to back up your WordPress sites — such as Duplicator or UpdraftPlus — allowing you to utilize built-in settings to control which files are backed up, backup schedules, and where your data is stored.

Alternatively, you can also back up your WordPress site manually. This WordPress site transfer process can be done two ways:

A. Through your cPanel
B. Via a file transfer tool (FTP)

A. cPanel

Log into your old hosting provider and navigate to your cPanel. There, open “File Manager,” select the document root for your domain, check “Show Hidden Files,” and click “Go.”

Here, you need to locate two files: “wp-content” and “wp-config.”

To compress your “wp-content” folder you can select the zip format and then when the zip file has been created, download it.

You will only need to download the “wp-config” file. You can also compress the wp-content to a tar gzipped file which might be smaller than a zip file.

If you are familiar with the command line then you can get over the zip or tar.gz file directly from your old host to your new host without having to download locally and upload a file.

Log into your old hosting provider and navigate to your cPanel. There, open “Backup,” from backup in cPanel you can download a full backup, partial backup as well as backups of your site’s database.

Now, back out to your cPanel homepage, locate “Backup,” and click on it. Here, you will see all the databases you have on your server. Be sure to navigate to the correct one and click on it.

Once you have selected the correct database backup for the site, it will allow you to download the “sql.gz” file.

At this point, you should have three separate downloads, including:

1. “wp-content.zip” file
2. “wp-config.php” file
3. “sql.gz” file

It’s important to note that this process is typically faster than using an FTP tool.

Note: Liquid Web customers use the customer portal rather than having to go through cPanel.

B. FTP Tool

FTP programs such as FileZilla (PC) and Transmit (Mac) are popular tools for downloading WordPress files and databases.

After choosing an FTP program and installing it on your computer, use your SFTP credential (sourced from your web host account) to directly connect to your site’s server.

Here, you can select and download all files and databases in your WordPress site’s directory.

But don’t forget to include hidden files such as “.htaccess,” as these might be hidden. Review your FTP program’s help file to ensure you are seeing hidden files.

If you are used to using the command line, then you can create both a MySQL dump of the site’s database and then gzip compress or zip up the WordPress site. The command-line method will be much faster.

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2. Create a WordPress installation with your new host

The second step to manually migrating your WordPress site is to log into the portal on Liquid Web to create a new site on an existing plan or a new install site would be created when you sign up for your new plan on Liquid Web.

When you add a site in the portal where your plan details are managed, it will install WordPress on it.

Be sure to review and/or edit these sections based on your site needs, and don’t forget to securely record your admin username and password.

Additionally, you can change the automated database name and table prefix if you see fit. You can also leave them as-is, but be sure to remember/record your database name and table prefix, as you will need to reference them later.

Once the installation of WordPress is installed, head back to your portal to get the SSH credentials to prepare to upload the files and database from your old site.

3. Upload your database into your new hosting account

Now it’s time to import the actual pages of your current site into your new hosting account.

To do this, navigate to “phpMyAdmin” under the “Databases” section and click on it. Once in, locate your database name and click on it.

Here, you will see blank database tables that were created with your blank WordPress installation.

What you want to do is select the “Check all” box underneath these blank database tables, click the dropdown menu titled “With selected,” and then choose the “Drop” option. This will delete all blank tables in your database.

With all tables deleted, it’s time to import the database that you previously backed up. Select “Import” near the top of the page and navigate to the “File to Import” section.

Here, select the “Choose File” button next to the “Browse Your Computer” text, locate the SQL database file you downloaded earlier, and click “Open.”

Then, uncheck the “Partial Import” box, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Go.” This will import all the tables that feature your current site’s content.

Once your new tables are imported, navigate to the table that features the word “options.” Here is where you can find and edit the URL of your site.

Locate “siteurl” underneath the “option_name” column, select the “Edit” button, change the URL to your new site’s URL string, and click “Go.”

Then, locate “home” underneath the “option_name” column and update it to your new URL string, as well.

Note: If you cannot find the “siteurl” or “home” paths easily in your hosting provider’s portal, you can Google where these paths are found or reach out to customer support for help.

4. Upload your content into your new hosting account

Head back to the new hosting portal and locate the “Access” tab which will be able to give you the SSH credentials.

Using your file manager application then upload the backup into the public_html folder of your site.

Now using the SSH credentials you will need to add those into your file manager application.

You will need to use a gzip decompress command to extract the backup.

Once extracted, be sure to go back and delete the actual zipped folder or the original gzip compressed file. The same step will apply if you upload a backup of your site in a zip file format — you can use a command such as unzip to extract out the file.

tar -xvf wp-content.tar.gz

unzip wp-content.zip

At this point, there is one more thing you need to do to ensure your content is pulling up correctly: adjust your “wp-config.php” file if needed if the database prefix is different.

5. Adjust your “wp-config.php” file

Navigate back to your file manager application and locate the “wp-config.php” file. Rather than editing the file directly in your file manager, it’s easier to download it and edit it in a text editor.

Right-click on the file, select “Download,” and open it in a text editor or code editor of your choice. At this point, you’ll need to locate two things:

1. “define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost);” — If you are moving to a new hosting provider, you might have to adjust the local hostname in your “wp-config.php” file. Be sure to check with support to see if this needs to be changed.

2. “$table_prefix” — Using the table prefix you recorded earlier, locate the “$table_prefix” lines in your “wp-config.php” file and update it with the appropriate prefix.

Once these two lines are updated in your text editor, save your new “wp-config.php” file. Now, go back into your file manager and overwrite the obsolete “wp-config.php” file with the new one.

You can do this by navigating to the file manager and selecting the file to upload. Depending on the file manager you are using, it will provide a warning if you want to replace the existing file or not.

At this point, all your current WordPress site’s files should be uploaded and updated, which means your site should display and function exactly as it did with your old hosting provider.

6. Post-migration WordPress cleanup

Once your site has been successfully migrated to your new hosting provider, it’s time to begin the WordPress cleanup process.

Replace old URLs with new ones

First, you will need to log into your new site and ensure that internal links to pages and references to images are updated by replacing old URLs with new ones. While you can do this manually, there are WordPress plugins you can use — such as the Better Search Replace plugin — that streamline this process.

Using the Better Search Replace plugin, navigate to “Tools” in your WordPress dashboard and select “Better Search Replace.”

Here, you will input your old domain URL and your new domain URL, as well as check all the boxes listed underneath “Choose which URLs should be updated.”

Now, select “Run Search/Replace.”

Reach out to publishers to reclaim potential lost backlinks

If you are concerned about backlinks that point to your old domain, you will need to reach out to each individual publisher manually to have them update any featured links. It’s recommended to focus on your highest quality backlinks, as this process can be tedious.

Reconfigure your domain’s DNS settings

You will also need to reconfigure your domain’s DNS settings to point to your new hosting provider.

Your domain registrar will have all the details you need to make this change. It’s important to note that DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to take effect, so be sure to make these changes during a period when you expect lower levels of traffic.

Once your site migration has been completed, all URLs have been updated, and your DNS settings have been reconfigured, you can manually delete website files, databases, and content on the old server.