How to MANUALLY Migrate Your Wordpress Site (still works in 2021)

hey everybody its Josh here in this tutorial I'm gonna show you how to migrate your WordPress website from one host to another now typically you see me do tutorials that are specific to Divi in this case it's going to be to any WordPress website so there are a plethora of really good duplicator tools and migration tools and cloning tools in the wordpress atmosphere that are great a lot of them are free some of them are premium but most of them do a great job but I find it and I have found it very important to know how to migrate a site manually just in case something goes awry case in point if you have a really big website a lot of times those migration tools will timeout or if you're transferring from like GoDaddy to site Brown or maybe to Bluehost or to another host a lot of times there's conflicts there and it's just really good to get an understanding of how a migration works in the backend of WordPress so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this site right here that is a test site that I have under dev dot in Trent or dev dot Josh Hall CO and we're gonna transfer this to a new site under entrance studios which is my business domain we're gonna transfer it to a subdomain there so what we want to do is first things first we want to download this site and back it up I'm gonna break this down into three phases phase one is going to be preparing this site for transfer phase two is going to be setting up the site on the new host and in phase three is going to be just some minor cleanup and making sure that everything is working right so first things first let's go ahead and download this site and back it up now you can go into your WordPress files through FTP but I have found that that can take a long time and it's much quicker to log into your control panel now I'm using SiteGround but if you're using GoDaddy or Bluehost or something similar you should have a very similar cPanel with all the settings for mail files databases and stuff like that so first thing that we're gonna do we're gonna want to do is we're gonna go ahead and login to our file manager and we're gonna go right into this site which is the dev Josh Hall cool we're gonna go ahead and show hidden files just in case we want any of that now here's one thing that's very important I actually had already previously zipped this up we're going to go ahead and that but by default this is what wordpress is going to look like if you're not already familiar you're gonna see a lot of files a lot of PHP and a lot of goofy stuff the only files that we need now you could transfer all of these files together but in this case I'm just gonna take the only files that we need which are the WP content which contains all of your themes your plugins your actual uploads your images things like that and then we're gonna take the WP config file this is basically telling the configuration of the database that's associated with WordPress so don't worry we're gonna get into that so what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually compress the WP content file and depending on how big this is it can take a little while for bigger sites that have a lot of images and things like that it may take some time this is just a new install pretty much so it didn't take long at all let's go ahead and back out and refresh this so we're gonna log back into dev and we can see right there the file that I just zipped up so we're gonna download this which again is containing all of our content all of our images and things like that and then we're gonna take our WP config file which we'll get into when we actually transfer this to the new host okay so that's all we need to this point again we're gonna leave all the other files because we're gonna upload WordPress and the new host and we're just gonna replace the files that we need now you can see again the wp-content folder is taking a little longer to download because it's bigger if you have a huge site you might take you know 5 10 15 minutes in which case you can grab some coffee or grab a snack while you're waiting ok so now that's downloaded let's go ahead and back out and let me show you the last little piece that we need to download and that is the actual database now if you're not familiar the database in WordPress is what holds the actual pages the posts your users now I found out this the hard way because I once moved all of my files over to new hosts but I didn't know about the database and it broke the entire site and I've had a lot of issues without understanding that so I'm hoping to give you a good understanding this by the end of the tutorial so what we're gonna do to get into our database is we're going to go into PHP myadmin now this is going to show us all of the databases that we have on our server in this case I know that my database is this one right here if I click this this is going to open up all of the tables and again you're gonna see posts you're gonna see comments and everything that's in in a wordpress there's one really important area and it's right here under options this is going to show you the actual URL that your site is pointed to now you can change this in WordPress you can go into your settings and you can change it right here but generally I like to go into the database just to make sure this is lining up correctly so for now what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and click the entire database so we can see all the tables and we're gonna check all and what we're gonna do is with the Selective you can either do it right here I tend to go up here and we're gonna export all of these tables which again is all of our pages and content images and the extra uploads are stored in the WPE files that can take the content files but this is actual pages posts and things of that sort so it's gonna download an SQL file so we're gonna go ahead and click go and this is gonna download that for us so now once that's downloaded and again this will take a little bit of time depending on how big your site is as well but generally these these download pretty quick so once this is downloaded I'm gonna go ahead and show you what we're looking at here okay so it's downloaded we're gonna click into our downloads and I can see that we have three things we have the database the SQL file we have the config file which is telling it what database to go to and we have our content folder which if I unzip this we're gonna see again our content folder that has all of our plugins it's got our themes it's got our uploads which again I dunno this is just a test site generally this folder is going to be probably your biggest so with that in mind what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and bounce over to our new host okay now I'm logged in to the hosting account for my new site where we're gonna put the current site and I'm using site ground as well for this one so for this tutorial we're just migrating a site from one site ground account to another but this will work the same for you if you have GoDaddy or Bluehost or something like that so the first things first what we want to do is we want to go ahead and install a blank installation of WordPress here where we're gonna move our current site now you can actually go into the database and you can add this manually but to make this a little easier on you I'm gonna just do a basic install and then we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty so we're gonna go ahead and click WordPress installer we're gonna go ahead and install WordPress and I have a sub-domain setup for a new dev site and again this is where that site is gonna go so we're gonna go ahead and we don't need to worry about a SSL certificate on this one so we want to make sure we have HTTP we're gonna call this new dev site which is just saying this is where that site's gonna go and let's go ahead and save the username and password it gives for us now you can of course make this your own you could put your own username and your own password in there in this case I'm gonna save that now last thing I want to show you before we install WordPress and this is what most people don't look at and a lot of you know new newer people the WordPress don't understand is that when you install WordPress not only does it install the PHP files and the WP content and all that but it also sets up a database so the database again is where all of your content is your pages your posts your comments users and things like that so I can see that this has a database name of 837 and it's got this weird table prefix which we'll worry about later now you could change this you could change your table prefix and you could change a database name in this case I'm just gonna leave it work so I know it's 837 now let's go ahead and install that and this shouldn't take too long okay and once the blank installation of WordPress is installed let's go ahead and click and we'll check out the site for right now so right now it's just a basic new site you can see new dev test site so what we want to do is we actually want to replace this with the dev dot Josh Hall CO site right here so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and log back into our control panel first things first is we want to import the actual pages so what we want to do is we want to go to PHP myadmin and now this is again where you're seeing all of your databases and I know that that site that I just set up was what the 837 so we're gonna go ahead and click into this now you'll notice there's just some blank files here this is just a basic WordPress install so what we want to do is we want to check all of these and we actually want to drop all of these so we don't need anything we don't want to empty because that's going to just empty the contents in there we just want to actually delete all these which is this case is called drop so yep we want to drop that all right now there's nothing in that database but no worries what we're gonna do is import the one that we had backed up so let's go ahead and click import and now we're gonna go down here to right here to choose the file so we want to choose that SQL file that we had so I'm gonna go into my downloads and here is the original SQL file that has all of our posts pages etc so we're going to choose this we're going to go down and we're going to go ahead and import this file and once this imports and this generally doesn't take too long depending on how big your site is it might take a little bit longer but this is going to import all the tables with all of the content now we're gonna go into the most important table which is right here in your options and here is where you can find the URL of your site now this is where I mentioned before to where when you're in your previous site I could go in here and I could change the URL before I move things but I like to know how to do this just in case I need to ever get in here so we're gonna go into options and we're gonna change the URL from dev Josh Hall CO to the new dev site dot in transit studios.com let's go ahead and save this because we need to do this again so new dev site site dot intern studios.com cool I'm gonna go ahead and update that now we're gonna go ahead and edit the home path as well now I've noticed like with GoDaddy these are found in different spots SiteGround makes it real nice because you can see these together but if you have any questions on this go ahead and just Google you know where you find these two options but you just need to change the site URL and the home URL right there okay so now we've got that set the next step we need to do is we need to actually move all of our files and content over so we're going to go back into our file manager and we're going to go right into the directory that has the new site okay so now we see this basic wordpress install what we need to do is right now the content folder has everything that WordPress comes with automatically we're gonna actually delete this and we're gonna replace the content folder with our backed up content folder so we're gonna upload we're going to choose the file and we want to choose the zip file you can't upload a open file like a folder like this automatically with file manager we're gonna go ahead and abort this now again you can use FTP doing this but it can take up to three four five times longer so I highly recommend going through your file manager particularly if you have a big site again this process may take five 10 15 minutes if you have a bigger site this one isn't large at all so this is going to upload and then we'll see what we want to do next okay now that this is uploaded we're gonna go ahead and go back to our file manager and the last thing we need to do is we need to make sure we extract this because it's not gonna automatically open up that zip folder so yep we want to extract this right and the path for our new site so we've got an extract it we're gonna close let's go ahead and go back up one level and re-enter this so right in here a new dev site is where the site is and there we go content now this content folder should now Hal's Divi and all that good stuff yep so that's everything that's right here in my new site which is on my current host so we're gonna go ahead and let's go back and what we want to do is we actually want to delete this zip folder I've found that if you keep zip folders on there that aren't being used it can really slow your server down okay and once that zip file is deleted there's one more thing that we need to do to make sure this is pulling up right because if I go out to the site right now it's just gonna look like the blank install though what we need to do is we need to make sure this is pointed to the correct site here so you can see new dev site and Transcom we've got all the the folder we've got all the files and everything transferred but it's not showing up as this yet so what we need to do is we need to go back into our file manager and we need to adjust the config file now for the sake of this I'm going to download this you can usually right click and make edits here but I'm gonna download this and pull it up in my text editor to make it easier now first thing I want to do though to make this look a little cleaner is I want to call this old site and we're gonna actually move all of these files into that folder just for our reference so we know this is our old site files just in case we need an old-school backup now what I want to do is let's go I can just double click this or right-click and download this is gonna open up the config file so let's go ahead and take a look at what we have here I'm gonna open this up and my text editor so this looks really confusing if you're not used to the config file but basically what this is saying is this is saying hey the name of that database which if you remember when we set up was 837 don't let me walk you through this because this is where it's important to know and this is how you can set up a database manually let's go ahead and click into MySQL databases you can see all the databases that I have on my on this current site and you can see right here that here's the database that was set up a little bit ago with 837 which is where the new sites going to go now automatically when you set up a database it gives it a user so a user has a set password automatically when you install this but if you do this manually you can just set up a database set up a user set the password and make sure that all privileges are assigned to that user so that's what you're seeing here you're seeing the name this is the database right here this is a new database the user right here 837 which is the same user and then this is the password that's on there sometimes if you're moving hosts you have to adjust the local host name but you can just talk to support for your hosting if that messes anything up but there's one last piece and config that's not lining up and it's this table prefix if you remember when we installed WordPress it gave us a table prefix of this but if I go back out and I look into PHP myadmin where I have those tables imported let's go ahead and look in here I can go into my database again 837 look at the table prefix it's not this wpq F it's actually WP seven zero so I'm gonna go ahead and replace this with WP seven or I'm sorry oh not zero because zero wouldn't work so now we can go ahead and say this let's go back into our file manager and we're gonna overwrite this config file with what we just updated now again you can edit this on your server but for the sake of this tutorial I just wanted to make sure this looked a little cleaner for you so there we go we've overwritten that now let's go back okay so now we've got the wordpress files in there we've got the content from the new site we've updated the config file and we've put all of our database tables in here under PHP myadmin so fingers crossed guys when I go back out to the site and refresh at new site downtown Studios we should see the new site and boom there we go so there we go guys I know there's there's quite a few steps with that but that's essentially how you transfer manually a site from one host to another so I'm gonna lay all these steps out I'm gonna give you a simplified version and a detailed version and again you can do this even more manually if you go into your databases you could set up a user or you can set up a database set up a user and what you would do is you would add that user to the database and then you want to what's called a sign and I'll show you what this looks like real quick you can add and you want to make sure all privileges are a sign then you could go to PHP myadmin and you could import everything move the site around and it's that easy I'd say easy because it is kind of tricky but as long as you get this a couple times so it'll really help you out now when I go back into file manager you can see everything here now there's one last step and this is the cleanup section here and actually this is kind of the end of phase 2 when I go into my site here let's go ahead and log in now when you log into the new site it's gonna be with your original login that you had not the login that was set up so I'm gonna go ahead and log in with my original log in here we're gonna log in and here we go now there's one last thing that we need to do because to take a look at this I'm gonna go ahead and open a new window here if I look at this image I can see if I inspect element I can see that this image is still pulling from the dev Josh Hall Khoa dress what we need to do is we need to and replace all the images the links file structure or you know file images and everything so you can do this manually but I use a really handy plugin called velvet blues so let's go ahead and once that's activated and uploaded we're gonna go ahead and use that okay so I'm in my plugins and I see right here velvet view blues update URLs is active and you're gonna find this under tools update URLs and what we're gonna do is we're gonna put our old domain in so here's my old site I'm gonna drop that in there and let's go ahead and drop in the URL for the new site and you do want to be specific if you have a SSL certificate on these but in this case we don't I think you can leave the backsplash at Vox s there but in this case we're just gonna do that okay so what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna go ahead and check everything because we want all these URLs to change so we're gonna click update URLs and you can see right there it chained now with a big site generally you're gonna see multiple pages and items and things change but it changed to content items so now when I go back to my front page I'm gonna right-click this image and it should be pulling from there we go new dev site enchanter Studios as opposed to the old site so that's it guys that's how you migrate a site and how you get everything ready to be set up on your new host now the last thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to log in to your old host and you're going to make sure you delete the database and delete all the old files for that and then what I would do with this as well is when you go into your control panel for the new site make sure you back it up just like you did previously you're gonna want to go into phpMyAdmin download all those that SQL file and then you're going to go into your file manager it's up to you you can either just download the content and the config file to make sure it's configured correctly or you could download all these files as a safe backup so I hope this has helped guys I know it can be overwhelming and overbearing but again in case a duplicator or cloning tool doesn't work this is a great way to know how to do it manually just in case so if this has helped let me know if you guys have any questions let me know otherwise hope you have a good time migrating sites manually and this will definitely help you out save you some hair save you some greys and you'll thank me later thanks guys [Music]

Channel: Josh Hall

Views: 267,276

Rating: 4.922379 out of 5

Keywords: josh hall, wordpress, wordpress migrate, divi, elegant themes, transfer worpdress website, manually migrate wordpress

Id: wROa37k_RQA

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2017