Moving Large WordPress Sites to HostingDude.com
There are different ways to move your WordPress® site between hosts. The easiest way is to use one of our Managed WordPress accounts, and then use its migration feature(more info). However, if you can't use the migration feature, you can use this process outlined in this article.
These instructions are best for large, complex WordPress sites who are not changing their domain names.
If you have a simple WordPress site, we recommend Moving Small WordPress Sites to HostingDude.com.
Before you start, you need:
- Access to your existing phpMyAdmin account
- FTP access to your existing WordPress site
- Access to the DNS settings for your domain name
- An active Web Hosting account with us (Linux is recommended)
To export and download WordPress blogs from your current host, you need to back up your existing database and have access to the WordPress files on your existing server.
To Download Your Existing Site from the Other Hosting Company
- Log in to your account with the other hosting company and generate a MySQL export from your phpMyAdmin screen. You might need to review their help articles or contact them to accomplish this step. For more information, see the WordPress codex.
- Save the MySQL export file to your local machine.
- Connect to your existing hosting account using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). For more information see What is File Transfer Protocol (FTP)? and FTP: Upload my files to cPanel hosting
- Download a copy of your WordPress website's files, including the three main WordPress folders: wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes. You need to download all root files. These typically have wp- in the name.
To import and upload your WordPress blog to our servers, you need to access the new hosting server and database.
To Set Up Your New Hosting Account
- Set up WordPress on your hosting account, if it isn't already. For more information, see Install WordPress on a Web or Classic Hosting Account.
- Write down the MySQL Name/Username and Password. You need this later.
- Write down the host of your MySQL database. For more information, see Viewing Your Database Details with Shared Hosting Accounts.
- On your local machine, open the the previously saved folder that contains your WordPress website's files.
- Locate the wp-config.php file in the root directory of your WordPress folder, and then open it using a text editor program such as Notepad.
- Locate the following string of code:
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'CoolExample');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'CoolUsername');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'CoolPassword');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'CoolHostname');
- Replace the Database Name, seen here as CoolExample with the Database Name/Username that you created during the previous steps. Make sure you keep the single quotes around the name you type.
- Replace the Database Name/Username, seen here as CoolUsername with the Database Name/Username that you created during the previous steps. Make sure you keep the single quotes around the name you type.
- Replace the Database Password , seen here as CoolPassword with the Database Password that you created during the previous steps. Make sure you keep the single quotes around the name you type.
- Replace the Database Hostname, seen here as CoolHostname with the Database Hostname that you noted during the previous steps. Make sure you keep the single quotes around the name you type.
- Save this file to your computer as wp-config.php.
- Upload a copy of your website's files to the root directory of the WordPress website. For more information, see FTP: Upload my files to cPanel hosting.
Note: You are uploading your website's files that you saved to your computer earlier from your other host. Do not upload the folder containing your website. Make sure you just upload all files inside the folder.
Things to Consider
Before your site can be live on the Internet, you need to update your DNS, which brings your current blog offline. see Change nameservers for my domains for more information.
Sometimes you need to update broken links when you move your WordPress site to a new server. If you find broken images and hyperlinks throughout your site when it's back online, you might need to clean your site of outdated link paths. For more information, see Fixing Permalink Issues with WordPress.
Other Resources
You can find more help at the WordPress website, which offers resources on these subjects:
Note: As a courtesy, we provide information about how to use certain third-party products, but we do not endorse or directly support third-party products and we are not responsible for the functions or reliability of such products.