Introduction
When the time comes and you need to move your WordPress site to a new hosting company, there are a few important steps to follow. You can do this in three easy steps:
- Make sure to back up your site.
- Create your site’s WordPress database on the new host’s server.
- Reconfigure WordPress to reactivate the site on the new server location
Three easy steps explained
When moving your WordPress site, backing up your site will give you peace of mind that you have a full back up in case something goes wrong. Log in to your site’s cPanel account. Once there, open the phpMyAdmin application, in which you select the database that contains your WordPress installation on the left. Then click on the “Export” tab in the navigation menu. Click the “Go” button and the database export process will be started, a file will be downloaded locally to your computer. Make sure there’s a database available in the new hosting environment, before you migrate anything. This is important as you do need this empty database so that you can import the contents – the SQL data – of the database of your site. In this database you’ll see the option to import an sql file. What’s interesting to know is that you have already made an .sql file in step one, when you exported the database. The site’s content needs to be uploaded to the new hosting environment, so follow the same procedure. Once you have done this, you can upload the zip file to the root folder. Unzip it to the same location that you used in the old hosting environment, so that you get the same content tree back.
Last but not least
The last thing to do is reconfigure your WordPress setup. Have a look in the root folder for a wp-config.php file. The following lines in this file:
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘user_wrdp1’);
/** MySQL database username */
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘user_wrdp1’);
/** MySQL database password */
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);
All the parameters in this file will need to be replaced with the new data you received from your new hosting company when you opened a hosting account with them. Find the DB_NAME, the DB_USER and the DB_PASSWORD that you received and insert this in between the quotes right after the variable names. Last step is to save the wp-config file, and voila! For assistance in moving your WordPress site, contact Cloud.co.za today.
