Hi, how easy is it to move a WP site from one server to another. Im working for a guy who already has a WP site on his server. We have decided to make a better one with a new template.
Im doing this in my server first to see if everything works. When it is finished, will it be a case of deleting his WP files etc and transferring the new one from my server via FTP.
Obviously we are wanting it to be as smooth as possible. Can anyone help?
Thanks, Alan.
It’s quite easy. I’d (generally) do it like this:
- Export wp database from old server and import it to new one (and fresh wp installation). After that there should be no changes of the old site.
- Prepare new template and make all necessary changes on new server.
- When you have ready, new site, use new template and new database on the old server.
If you make some changes in urls make sure to make redirections in your .htaccess file.
use phpmyadmin to export old data and import sql file in new server. WP have one plugin “import data” you can use it so
It may be necessary to change some data in the database backup before importing it in the new site. Some plugins store “root relative” urls (I don’t know how to call them) in the database, and those might not work on the new server (it happened to me).
For example, your site’s root directory might be something like ‘/home/mhd/domainname/htdocs’
while on the new server it might be different: ‘/sites/domainname/htdocs’
In that case, you’d have to replace any ‘/home/mhd/domainname/htdocs’ stored in the database with ‘/sites/domainname/htdocs’.
Thanks for the feedback guys. As it happened everything went OK. I simply installed the new theme on to his server, and activated it.
A few amendments were needed, Im just not used to things running that smoothly!!!
Alan:)