Aren’t you happy with your current hosting provider? Is your site performing too slowly of late? Are you facing too many problems? If these are bothering you then it’s time you move your WordPress site to a new host. There can be a ton of other factors for which you might need to migrate, whatever be the reason, in this article we’ll tell you how to move your WordPress site to a new host without facing much downtime.
Migrating from one host to another can be burdensome and stressful. It’s a huge undertaking and even the thought of it might be taxing. However, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It requires a lot of prepping but if you follow the steps below, you’ll be able to move your WordPress website to a new host as smoothly as possible.
A few important things to note are that the process is technical but it’s nothing you can’t do or handle. Also there are several hosting providers who provide WordPress migration services. You can contact support to know more about these services or to get guidance. Your current host and the one that you want to switch to will determine the cost of these services.
You can move your WordPress site to a new host through different means. You can backup manually using the FTP software or even go for plugins like BackupBuddy to do the heavy-lifting for you. But in this article we’ll tell you how to change your hosting provider without a paid plugin.
Few Simple Steps To Move WordPress Site To New Host
If you’re reading this article, it means you are presently dissatisfied with your current host or you’ve outgrown their services. So, to migrate from one host to another, you need to follow these steps.
Choose A New Host
This is the first step for any kind of shifting. If you’re dissatisfied with the place you live in and want to shift, firstly you have to find out other places to live in, check whether it serves your needs or is suitable to you. Once you’ve done that research, then only can you think of moving out from your old place. Similarly, in this case as well, you need to find your new host. There are a number of hosting providers to choose from but below we’ve listed out the ones we think are the best options.
· Bluehost
This is a shared hosting provider. If you’re looking for a simple and cheap hosting provider, then shared hosting is perfect for you. But if your website receives a lot of traffic, this isn’t the best host to go with. Many people avoid shared hosting because of this reason. But if you’re a beginner with a relatively new website, then you can go for Bluehost any day.
If you want to know more, Bluehost is also recommended by WordPress itself. That’s the best recommendation one can get. Bluehost is the best WordPress host for beginners.
It’s also important to note that Bluehost provides the best setup assistance after you migrate so you’ll have to face minimum downtime. Plus, it’s cheaper than other hosting providers. But if you’re looking to move a heavy-traffic website, it’s best you check out the others in the list as well.
· WP Engine
This hosting provider is best for mature, complex and heavy websites. If you move your WordPress site to this one, you’ll feel like a group of experts is handling your website.
WP Engine provides customized and an extensive environment. They manage everything for you. This is the trusted hosting provider of many big WordPress sites. Starting from optimizing your website to managing the environment to protecting you from online threats, this hosting provider offers some of the best facilities for large websites with heavy traffic.
Even if you migrate to this host from the beginning, it’ll maximize your site potential, and will grow with you to adjust and manage your growing levels of traffic. WP Engine also has consistently good ratings as a hosting provider.
To sum it up, WP Engine offers Website backups daily, high-level security and automatic security updates.
· SiteGround
If the technicalities of moving your WordPress site to a new host bother you, then this is the best option for you. This host provides a managed hosting environment and takes care of all the complex technical aspects. As a website owner, you already have a lot to do. So, spending your time to deal with the migration or manage your server is not ideal. You can easily drop that task and leave it in the hands of SiteGround if you choose this as your new hosting provider.
In case of SiteGround, you also enjoy a lot of flexibility unlike other managed WordPress hosts. Some are very rigid where no kind of customization is allowed. Don’t worry, SiteGround is not like those. They have a lot of options to help you in the hosting process.
However, if you’re someone who loves the technical aspect and enjoys the process of setting up or customizing the server according to your preference, then SiteGround might not be the best option for you.
This is also one of the most trustworthy hosting providers. They have been around for more than 10 years, so you can easily rely on SiteGround to be your new host.
· CloudWays
This one is not a WordPress host per say. But you can deploy your WordPress website using this. This is a managed cloud hosting provider. You can deploy WordPress using any cloud deployment you choose, for example you can go for Linode, Digital Ocean, or Amazon AWS to set up your website. They will manage your hosting smoothly after you have deployed WordPress using these cloud deployments.
Cloud hosting providers can be difficult to manage but CloudWays makes it a lot easier. The takeaway from CloudWays is that there minimum to no restrictions at all on your WordPress website. Other hosting providers are known to employ such restrictions.
This is all about the first step. Now, if you’ve decided who is to be your new host, we can move forward to the next bit.
Backup And Migrate Your Current WordPress Website
We advise you to buy your new hosting provider before you make the switch. This is necessary because while migrating you will need the login credentials of your new site.
Now, the next step is back up. Once you’ve decided who your new hosting provider will be, start backing up everything on your website. This is also a good practice even if you’re not thinking of migrating. If you have a daily backup, you won’t lose anything if anything tragic were to happen. Otherwise, this is a must when you’re moving your WordPress site to a new host. You can back up and shift your website using Filezilla and the cPanel. Both are FTP clients which are available with your current host. In the section below, we’ll discuss how to go about the process using both these FTP managers.
· Migrate using Filezilla
To migrate using Filezilla, firstly you need to install the software which is available for free. After that, you’ll require the login credentials of both your current site and your new host site.
- Connect To Your Existing Site: This is the usual procedure you do every day. You require your password and username of your WordPress site to login.
- Go To Public_Html: Once you’re inside your site go to the public_html file section. This is where you’ll find all the files of your site. Next, download them all. If your account is a mature one with a lot of content, then you’re bound to have huge amounts of files. So, downloading them will take a lot of time. So, be patient. How much time it takes to download all your files also depends on your internet connection. So, start with downloading only when you have proper internet connectivity and speed.
- Upload Downloaded Files To Your New Host Site: After you’ve downloaded all the files from your previous site, then you’ll need the login credentials of your new host. Login using the information. Then similarly go to the public_html section. Next, upload all the files that you downloaded from your previous site to this domain. If you got the downloading correct, then your new site will have everything from your old host and your site will be as good as new.
· Migrate Using cPanel
If you use cPanel, the process can become a lot easier and much faster. Also, if you’re not a technical person and looking for ways to avoid the tough technical bits of the process, then you can use cPanel because it’s a little less intimidating. cPanel doesn’t require you to install any software to begin with unlike Filezilla. However, one important detail is that it works only when both your previous and new host site use cPanel. The process is outlined below.
- Locate File Manager: Go to your current website, login and find out where your File Manager is. This is the folder that holds all your site’s files. After you’ve found the folder, open it.
- Download The Files: After you’ve opened the file manager go to the public_html section. Click on it to open all of the information contained in your site. If you have more than one domain installs, then the public_html folder may be named differently like mydomain.com etc.
- Compress And Create A Zip File: after you’ve selected all the files, create a .zip file and save it on your computer. Your files will be safely contained in that file.
- Create A New Domain On Your New Host: Next login to your new host site and navigate to the cPanel there. If you don’t have a domain in your new site then, add one.
- Go To Add Domain: add your newly created domain on your new host site by filling out the details and then clicking on add domain.
- Upload And Migrate: This is the final step. Once you have your new domain on your new host site, all you need to do is add the files that you just downloaded to your newly created domain. Go back from the add domain page to the public_html folder and upload the .zip file which you had downloaded from your previous site, here. Then click on unzip to release the downloaded files on your new site. Don’t worry, the unzip feature is in-built.
If you’ve got all the steps correct, you will have your brand-new host site ready to go. But before that, there’s another task you need to complete.
Move Your WordPress Database
This is the final step after which your site transfer task will be complete. For this, we’ll use ‘phpMyAdmin’ as a tool. The process is listed below.
- Find The Correct Database: You’ll come across a lot of databases, but you need to know which one you need to access. If you don’t know that already then go to File Manager and find wp-config.php. Use code-editor to open it. After you’ve opened this, search for the name of your database. Once you find it, we go on to the next bit.
- Export Your Database: Select your database, click on the ‘Export’ button and then select ‘Go’ to save your database on your pc.
- Login To Your New Site: Go to your new site’s cPanel and search for ‘My SQL Database Wizard.’ This will guide you through the rest of the process of creating an empty database on your new site.
- Import Your Downloaded Database: Go to ‘phpMyAdmin’ and import the database you just downloaded by clicking on upload from the navigation menu.
- Update Configuration File: Change your new database name, password and username and etc to update your new host site with the latest details. Once you’re done with this, you’re good to go.
After this, you can choose to update your existing name server information for your new host site.
Go through the steps and let us know if you found these steps to move your WordPress site to a new host useful.
