I recently moved my blog to a new host.
In this post I will tell give you a little guide on how to move a WordPress blog to a new host. Let me start with the beginning. Why did I want to move my blog to another host in the first place? Well, when I started this blog as a part time project I pretty much found the cheapest host that I knew of to keep it cheap. I was not even sure how it would be to have my own blog. After about 6 months I was still a happy blogger, but I was not that happy with the cheap host I choose when I started my blog. That was why I decided to move my blog.
Here you have 11 steps that I made in order to make the move:
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- Find a host that fits your needs. You can found many different host providers for Wordpress blogs. Some are cheap some are more expensive. To find the one that fits your needs let me ask you a couple of questions: How important is your blog to you? Do you need phone support? Do you lose money if your blog is down for a couple of hours?
- Do a checkup on your new provider. When you have found a new host for your WordPress blog do some research to check out what other people think about them. Remember, you can always find someone who has had a bad experience with a given hosting company, but if you find many who are saying the same there might be something about it.
- Backup, backup and backup. Well it is pretty obvious that you should take a good backup right before you start to move your blog. Remember to backup both files and database.
- Make a clean install. – At your new host make a clean WordPress installation
- Restore your files – Upload your backup files to the new host via FTP.
- Change wp-config.php – Change the settings in wp-config.php so it match your new hosts database settings (hostname, username and password)
- Restore your My-SQL database at your new host.
- Check that everything is working – Browse around your site and check that everything is working. (It might be a good idea to delete all Internet cache to be sure that everything is loaded from your new host and not from the Internet Cache)
- Create e-mail addresses – Re-create all thee-mail addresses that were created on the old host.
- Confirm redelegation of the domain name and wait for the change to kick in. – You will properly receive an e-mail about this where you will have to approve the move to the new host.
- Unsubscribe your services at the old host when everything is running on your new host unless of cause you still have services you have not moved to the new host.
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Good luck with the move. Please feel free to drop me a comment if you think I have forgotten anything or if you want to ask me a question about this subject.
Hi, Thomas
I’m glad to see you posted the instructions on moving WordPress blogs to a new host. Great points.
Although it seems like a lot of steps, they’re much needed. Good reminder to only stop services at the old host after everything is running smoothly, not before. That’s actually saved me in the past when I moved to a different host.
Thanks for the info. I’m sure it’ll help a lot of people who are moving their blog.
Take care,
Allyson
Hi Allyson
Thank you for visiting my blog again 🙂
I thought it would be nice with a little checklist for moving a WordPress blog.
Hope you have had a nice weekend and are ready for the new week coming very soon 😉
Adding your site to my ComLuv enabled list right now, Thomas.
Ana
Hi Ana
Great to see you here on my blog and thank you very much for adding me to your list 🙂
Thomas, glad to see you listing all the proper steps for moving from one host to another. I’m thinking about changing hosts, so I might need to come back here and read this again when I make the final decision. Thanks!
Hi Ileane
I am glad you find my post interesting. Why are you considering changing host? You are always welcome on my blog Ileane 🙂
Hey Thomas,
I wish I had this before I started my new blog! Really, I was so flabbergasted by the hwole shifting thing that I actually got a friend of mine to do the whole shifting thing for me! God bless the world for friends and for friends who are good at the techno lingo! 🙂
Hi Hajra 🙂
Moving a blog can be a scary thing for many people. A lot of things can go wrong. That was why I made this post to share my own experiences.
And thank you for doing that! Is definitely helpful!
I personally think that having maintaining a Back-up is the most important in the process. Just in case troubles will happen, it would be easy for you to have back all your files again. It’s better to lose everything with a back-up than to start all over again.
Hi Greg
With a good backup you can always get back to where you started. That is always a good idea to take backup before making big changes.
Yup! I know somebody who didn’t take time to have a back-up of his content. Unfortunate to him, he needed to start all over again including the format of every post that he needs to follow.
i tried importing blogs from wordpress but I never success doing that. and you got something I needed to know when importing glad I read your blog.. tnx for sharing..
If you move to a new host, will the URLs of your pages change?
Hi Jane
No if you have your own domain name you can move that to point on your new host in the process.
Hi Thomas,
I recently move to my new hosting for my blog, I really want to say how important it is to keep back ups as you mentioned. I had a problem with the files that I moved to my new hosting but thanks god I had keep a back up and everything is ok now, having back ups is really crucial, thanks for sharing…
Hi Kostas
A good backup before you make a big change like switching to another host is always a good idea.
But when i moving from square brothers to godaddy, i m facing dns problems, how could i solve it.
Contact GoDaddy. I am sure they can help you.