Moving WordPress Blog or Website : Full Guide For Every Situation

Moving WordPress Blog or Website can be one of the toughest job, if you think it is quite popular blog, that has been hacked, database corrupted, the server which are you in is worst than a hell, Google is giving legal threatening to save delicate Microsoft Windows users in SERP – “This Website can harm your computer”. We had to move this WordPress blog under such dangerous situation and after that excellent experience of moving WordPress. So, in this article we will guide you for moving WordPress.

Before Moving WordPress

Before Moving WordPress it is important to evaluate the current situation. If you are moving WordPress from one host to another good one, then it is very important to do the work using either a fresh formatted computer with some Linux distro or from someone’s Linux or Mac computer. There is every possibility of having malwares on Windows and Shell commands are easy to run by default from UNIX based system.

Next evaluation is how much you know or rather how much you can learn in the process of Moving WordPress. Marriage, typically happens once in life, so is about Moving WordPress. If you are Moving WordPress for 5th or nth times – you will admit that your web host was never good and it was the sole reason for Moving WordPress – you must not get the pain of moving WordPress again by selecting a good host.

Probably you are moving WordPress from a bad server to a good server.

Things to understand Before Moving WordPress

The basic logics for Moving WordPress :

• You need to download the full FTP content before Moving WordPress. Its quite time taking process. If you are great in using UNIX commands and have the shell access, simply tar it and download on your hard disk.
• The next step for moving wordpress is to get the MySQL backup. Best is to use PHPMyAdmin and select all the tables and compress it to download.
• So you got everything ready for Moving WordPress. Ideally this is the proper full backup that should be taken not only for  Moving WordPress, but for regular safeguard too.

But in case you can not access the PHPMyAdmin :

• Then use some plugin to get the MySQL data needed for Moving WordPress. Search in WordPress repository for such plugins.
• You need to download the full FTP content as usually.

In situation where you have no access neither FTP nor PHPMyAdmin :

• In this case there is nice plugin named PressBackup. Install it, it will make the whole thing in to a single compress file.

WordPress default export function for Moving WordPress :

• Practically useless for bigger websites as there is restriction in size, but yes this is a method to restore the MySQL database.
• FTP content as usually will have to be downloaded for this method of Moving WordPress.

WordPress is not a Suitcase to move

The biggest point is, Moving WordPress is basically not an ‘by default’ feature. Quite obviously with any CMS this is true. Best method for Moving WordPress in complex type of case is to use PressBackup plugin. Simply it will recognize which folder and database is of whom. These bad habits of improper setup are usually due to cPanel. With cPanel everyone is WordPress expert now. They run those nasty scripts to install WordPress. Basically they are careless about the FTP or MySQL database hierarchy. If you are thinking if you ask them for such Moving WordPress which they themselves made – they will simply blame the innocent user for nothing or delete many important things to ease their process for Moving WordPress.

Final Steps for Moving WordPress

So you got the backups of the full website. The final steps for Moving WordPress are :

• Change the Name-Server to point to new server
• Add the old domain to new server
• Install a fresh WordPress on it
• Restore the FTP content
• Restore the MySQL content

Making moving WordPress easy with shell commands

We use easy methods for moving WordPress for our Managed WordPress service. If you know UNIX commands, its practically becomes very easy. Easy does not means it has no risks – at any time if a backup fails in this process to move, you have to cry. That is why, we usually either use a test domain or use offline Installation to test the backups whether working or not, before moving WordPress.