Moving A Wordpress Blog To A New Server - The Palatnik Factor Moves
Written by Pablo Palatnik on June 18, 2008
If you aren’t to technical like myself and have had a wordpress blog for a while, when it comes time to move servers, you’ll come to realize its not as easy as 1,2,3. Maybe I’m just really not technical myself but I should really thought about where I would host this blog long-term before I started because if you’ve been blogging for a while, I’m sure your blog is one of your most prized possessions.
The time has come where I had to move this blog to another server (long-term plan) and as we speak, its about to migrate. How the hell do you migrate all these files, etc?
Here is what it says on the official wordpress Blog, but my suggestion, ask your new hosting company if they can do it for you or throw someone that knows how to do it a couple of bucks and save yourself the headache or risk of losing your content.
Moving WordPress to a New Server
If you are moving WordPress from one server to another, begin by backing up your data. This includes backing up your WordPress database as well as all the core files, images, plugins, and other files on your site. See WordPress Backups and Backing Up Your Database for more details.
* Note: If you are changing to a new server but same domain, all you need to do is edit wp-config.php and upload everything as it is to your new server.
If You Don’t Care If Your Old Blog Works
1. Download a copy of the main wordpress files from your OLD blog to your hard drive and edit wp-config.php to suit the new server.
2. Go back to your OLD blog and go to options and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
3. Again, download your database (but keep the old one just in case), upload this new database and the copy of the wordpress core files with the edited wp-config.php to your new server. Thats it!
If You Want Your Old Blog To Still Work
Caution: Make sure you have a backup of your old blog’s WordPress database before proceeding!
Part A - Activating Your New Blog
1. Download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your OLD blog’s installation.
2. Go back to your OLD blog and go to options and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
3. Again, download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your NEW blog’s installation.
4. Download your database once again (but keep the old one). Upload this database to your new server. It will be easiest if you use the same database name and you create a user with the same login credentials on your new server as on your old server.
5. If you used a different database name and/or user (see previous step), edit wp-config.php in your NEW blog’s installation folder appropriately.
6. Upload the NEW blog’s installation folder to your new site. Presto, your NEW blog should be working!
Part B - Restoring Your Old Blog
1. On the original server, delete your OLD blog’s database (remember, you should have a copy on your local computer that you made at the very beginning).
2. Upload your OLD blog’s installation folder to your original server, overwriting the files that are currently there (you may also delete the installation folder on the server and simply re-upload the OLD blog’s files).
3. Upload your OLD blog’s database from your local computer to the server. That should do it!
Another procedure for making copies of posts, comments, pages, categories and custom field (post status, data, permalinks, ping status…) easy to follow:
1. Install a new Wordpress blog
2. Go on old blog Admin panel. Here, in Manage > Export select “all” in menu Restrict Author.
3. Click on Download Export File
4. In new blog go on Manage > Import, choose Wordpress item.
5. In the page that will be shown, select the file just exported. Click on Upload file and Import
6. It will appear a page. In Assign Authors, assign the author to users that already exist or create new ones.
7. Click on Submit
8. At the end, click on Have fun
Note: using this method if there are some articles in new blog (like hello world, info page…), these will not be erased. Articles are only added. Using the former procedure the article in new blog will be deleted.
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