Wordpress: How to Move Self Hosted Wordpress Blog across Web Hosts

Wordpress: How to Move Self Hosted Wordpress Blog across Web Hosts

I recently moved Shivaranjan.com to DreamHost that went on well. Let me share with you the steps that I followed to move Shivaranjan.com across the Web hosts.

1. Backup the Current Wordpress Database: Back up your Wordpress database. Wordpress has provided wonderful tutorial on how to backup wordpress database.

2. Backup all the Wordpress files from you blog’s root directory: Backup the entire contents of your blog and save it in your local hard drive using your favorite FTP program.

3. Change the name server settings in your domain control panel: Change the name server details of your domain in your domain control panel to point to the new web host. e.g ns1.dreamhost.com

4. Put up a maintenance notice in your blog: Put up a maintenance message in your blog. I did this by creating a index.html file that contained the message and put in my blog directory.

5. Uploading the entire contents of your blog to your new web host: Using a your favorite FTP program upload the entire contents of your blog to new host.

6. Create and Import your old database to your new web host: Once the DNS changes have been propagated you would be able to create a new database in your new web host. Now import the database that you backed up in step 1 into the new database. Wordpress has given a tutorial on restoration of database from backup. Note DNS propagation takes around 12 hours to get reflected.

7. Change the wp-config.php file: Now edit the wp-config.php to input the new database host name, database name and database password.

That’s it you are done, now your site should be up and running. This what exactly I did to move two of my blogs from my previous web host to DreamHost and this worked flawlessly for me.

Note: This post is a part of tutorial group writing project organized by Monika.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 3:38 am and is filed under Computers and Internet, Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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23 Responses to “Wordpress: How to Move Self Hosted Wordpress Blog across Web Hosts”

Aseem Kishore on October 13th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

Hey man, thanks for the excellent how-to guide! Thanks a lot! I may need this in a few weeks or months, let’s see.
Shivaranjan on October 13th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

Aseem-
I felt like putting this post after I saw your comment in the previous post.
ReviewSaurus on October 13th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

That’s a nice guide. I’ve read this on some other blog and using the same trick I was able to move my blog to media temple’s hosting
Shivaranjan on October 13th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Mayank-
Before moving I googled for a guide, though there were lot of guides available but most of them were too complicated. I then tried moving a small blog and tested it for a week for any potential issues. Once I felt that things are working fine I moved shivaranjan.com.
Monika @ The Writers Manifesto on October 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

Hi Shivaranjan,

I noted your entry down. This is a fantastic post and will help me to move my husbands blog across to my host.

I will list all the entries on the 20th. so don’t forget to visit back and vote for the top 3. I wish you the best of luck to win a prize.

Kind regards
Monika
Shivaranjan on October 13th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

Monika-
Thanks for accepting the entry. Hope this would help move your husbands blog.
Alfred on October 14th, 2007 at 12:19 am

Im sure this will come in handy someday when i move.
Add to del.icio.us
Thx m8
Nirmal on October 14th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

When I moved my blog to Bluehost, I didnt move the tables as I didnt have much customizations that time. But now I do back up regularly.
abhishek on October 14th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

thanks buddy quite good and step by step guide…i will use it when ever i will shift to a new server.
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ram on October 29th, 2007 at 6:39 am

There is no need to create a maintainence notice, you can transfer your blog without any downtime.

First transfer everything from old webhost to new webhost and then change the name servers, it is pretty simple.
Shivaranjan on October 30th, 2007 at 12:01 am

Ram-
We would need to create maintenance notice if you do not want to loose out valuable comments.
ram on October 30th, 2007 at 12:12 am

Yaah thats true if you dont want to loose comments, but if you put index file, your blog is not accessible thats why i said like that.
Shivaranjan on October 30th, 2007 at 12:17 am

Ram-
You know we need to choose between comments and the downtime. And I would prefer the downtime rather loose the valuable comments. I would say that this depends from blog to blog.
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Vivek on November 11th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

Hi.

I have the following doubts:

a) which is a good host? dreamhost or bluehost?

b) accoring to ram , it is possible to migrate seamlessly to another host. But what about the DNS propogation delays? Doesnt that matter?

c) Do we loose google page rank/indexed pages list on google servers if we migrate?
Shivaranjan on November 13th, 2007 at 7:26 am

Vivek-
a) Many of my friends here use bluehost and they say it is good. I prefer Dreamhost.
b) There are delays in DNS propogation but if you set up the mirror of your blog in your new host then the downtime would be very less or negligible but you will loose out comments on your blog.
c) Your google page rank or indexed pages with google would be unaffected. You will loose all this only if you change your domain.
Vivek on November 29th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

Hi Shivaranjan

thank you for the details. we have managed to migrate our site to a shared hosting successfully.
Symbian on December 4th, 2007 at 6:54 pm

Sometimes I will move to Wordpress too!
Venkatesh Varalu on December 25th, 2007 at 11:43 pm

Hi Shivaranjan,
Thanks for this guide.

I have a small doubt. What if i have my blog hosted in wordpress and now i want to have my own domain and hosting service… Will i be able to import all the posts in the existing blog(hosted by wrdpress) to my new blog(going to be hosted in my desired host) ? help me..

Also i have one more doubt…
Like recently i created a sub-domain news.mysite.com and pointed it to my blog in wordpress and its not working…help me..

Shivaranjan.com