How to Migrate your WordPress Site To A New Host

Migrating your WordPress blog from one hosting platform to another may seem like a daunting prospect. The aim of this guide is to give you an understanding of all methods of migration so that you can decide which WordPress migration process is right for you. 

Methods to Migrate your WordPress Site

There are multiple ways to migrate your WordPress site:

The manual method - This involves taking a full copy of your website files and databases which can then be uploaded to their new locations on your new hosting package.

The plugin method - With WordPress being the most popular CMS on the planet, there are various plugins available to help you migrate your WordPress website without having to delve into the technicalities. We will discuss the plugin options later in the post.

Get someone to do this for you - Don’t laugh, we’re being serious. Krystal offers a migration service (free of charge!) for anyone moving between platforms or moving into Krystal from another host. Let one of our experts take care of everything for you.

Using Softaculous or Installatron - Both of which are application installers, enabling you to install various web apps at the click of a button.

The Manual Method

This method of migrating your WordPress site involves taking a copy of your website files via FTP and a copy of the Database via phpMyAdmin. Log into your existing server via FTP. We recommend using Filezilla for this. You would then be required to copy all of the website files from their current location (public_html if using cPanel and it is your only domain) to a location on your computer. Once all files are copied over, login to your existing control panel and navigate to phpMyAdmin. Select the database from the column on the left-hand side and it will open in the window to your right. In the top bar, you will see an option named “Export” select this, make sure the format is set to SQL and then click GO. A copy of your database will be downloaded via your browser to your PC. 

Now you have everything backed up, it’s simply a case of running through the same process in reverse to your new hosting account. Connect up via FTP, copy the files back to the same location. For the database, before logging into PHPMyAdmin, you will need to create a new database, assign a user and a password. Once this has been done, navigate to phpMyAdmin, select your newly created Database and use the import function. This will restore all of the data. The final step here is to open up your wp-config.php file via FTP or cPanel’s File Manager and edit the “Database name”, “Database user” and “Password” fields to match up with the newly created database. Once this is done, test the website.

The Plugin Method

There are various plugins available to help assist with the migration of a WordPress Blog. We’re going to use Updraft as an example. 

Log into WordPress, navigate to plugins and select ‘add new’. Search for Updraft and get it installed. Once installed, open up the Updraft menu from your WordPress dashboard. From here you can take a full backup of the WordPress installation, plugins, themes, content and the database. Simply follow the on-screen instructions and download the zip files to your computer. 

To restore using Updraft, log in to your new hosting account and install a blank copy of WordPress, (we have Installatron and Softaculous installer to automate this) once WordPress has been installed, navigate back to the plugin installer and again install Updraft. Once active, navigate to the updraft menu, choose the restore option and drag the downloaded zip files onto the uploader. Click go and watch the magic happen. Updraft will restore the entire site exactly as it was on your previous hosting account - awesome huh? 
 

Get someone to do this for you

WordPress is the most popular CMS on the planet, finding someone to help migrate your WordPress blog is a piece of cake. For anyone moving into Krystal, we will migrate your WordPress site free of charge, no catches, just a personal and honest service. You can see what’s included in our free WordPress migration here: https://krystal.help/migrations/free-migration-service-what-s-included

For anyone using external providers or moving your website outside of Krystal, companies such as Fiverr have people offering to move websites for just a few quid! 

Migrate your WordPress Site with Krystal Using Softaculous or Installatron

We offer both Softaculous and Installatron, both of which are application installers. They have the option to import a remote WordPress Website which makes things much easier.

You can access both app installers from within your cPanel account.  We have a guide written for both Installatron and Softaculous.

Our support team is available 24/7 if you have any further questions on how to migrate a WordPress site, please get in touch with us here.