How to migrate a WordPress site to a new host
There are several ways to migrate a WordPress website to a different hosting company. The easiest method we found is the following:
Let’s say you want to migrate your site from Hosting Company A To Hosting Company B.
Your site domain name is: mysitename.com
SECTION A — IMPORTING THE WORDPRESS SITE FROM COMPANY A TO COMPANY B
- Login to yourWordPress Admin panel (at Company A), and deactivate all plugins.
- Change the theme to one of theWordPress default themes, such as Twenty Seventeen or Twenty Fifteen.
- Go to Cpanel (on Company A) t add an A record as follows:
Under Domains, click the “Advanced DNS Zone Editor”
Select your domain from the dropdown and add a record
For Name: enter “new”
TTL: 600
Type: A
Address: The IP address from the new hosting account (Company B)
4. In order to make the process seamless, and have the site up and running at all times with minimum downtime,
Create a new subdomain at the destination. Login to Cpanel at company B, go to your hosting account.
Look for AddOn Domains tab, and click it.
Under New Domain enter: new.mysitename.com (the subdomain can be any word you can think off, here I chose “new”)
Click the “Add Domain” button.
5. Go to Applications
6. Find the WordPress app icon and click it.
7. Open the drop down menu on the right from “install this application”, and select “import existing install”
Go to right section where it says “From different account”,
(Select this option to migrate and import into the Installatron system an installed application that is located on a remote web hosting account. You will be prompted to select a location within the local web hosting account for the installed application to be copied to. No changes will be made to the installed application on the remote web hosting server.}
and click continue
- Fill in the form Source and Destination Sections
- URL: enter site name: http://www.mysitename.com/
Protocol: ftp (or SSH if that’s what is used in Company A) but ftp should work as well.
Port: 21
Username: Your username for Cpanel at Company A
Password: Your password
Path: public_html/mysitename (check with company A File manager to get the correct path )
Destination
Select a location for the installed application to be cloned to within your web hosting account. From the drop down, select the new domain you just added: http://new.mysitename.com
Under Database Management select: “Automatically create a new database for the installed application.”
- Click the “Import” button
Section B – Cloning the Site from new.mysitename to mysitename
DO THE FOLLOWING STEPS AFTER THE SITE COMPLETES THE IMPORTING PROCESS (Go to Applications>>My Applications to monitor the status of the importing process)
Go to Addon Domain
Add the actual domain mysitename.com to your new hosting Company B
Repeat step 4 above.
14. Applications >> My applications
Go to your new.mysitename.com
On the right of the site name, click the “clone” icon 4rth icon from the left
Under destination: Choose http://mysitename.com or http://www.mysitename.com
Click the “Clone” button.
Section C — Changing the DNS to point to the new hosting – Company B
- To update the nameservers, go to your account at Company B, choose Domains, look for your domain: mysitename.com,
- Click on your domain, click on Manage DNS
- Go to Nameservers>>>Click Change, Choose default from the dropdown. Click Save.
Check in a browser, it can take from an hour to 48 hours max, for the change to take effect.
That’s all. YourWordPress site should be up and running very soon at the new hosting company.
18. Verify that your WordPress site is now served from the new hosting company (B). You can make sure by checking the IP address of the site that it matches the hosting IP of the new company, one way to do that is by going to the command line Terminal on a Mac or cmd window on a windows machine and typing: ping mysitename.com. You can then see the IP address the site is on.
19. After your WordPress site is up and running at the new hosting company, you may want to re-activate your original theme, and re-activate the plugins.
20. You may also want to delete the temporary site you created and cloned: new.mysite.com from the WORDPRESS APPLICATIONS on your new host, in order to save disk space.
Hope this helps.
Last Updated on March 21, 2021 by Code Guru