Migrate WordPress to another server

Step 1: You export the posts from your blog.
You’ll get an xml file.

Step 2: You import the file, on the new blog.

All the links will work.

If you need further details, please reply.

I’m having oodles of problems with this and would like to know if there is a decent hosting service that will do the migration for a new customer???

I download some backup programs and view the file download via my windows explorer and they are marked with Dreamweaver or Flash logos. These programs are on my computer because I use them in my work. It’s beyond me why the downloads picking out these programs.

i.e. If I click on a Dreamweaver logo for “backupwordpress” php script it opens up in Dreamweaver. If I click a Flash logo for “screenshot” it will open in Flash.

This is all nice but what happens when I try to upload these to my wordpress for a plugin or backup tool?

I would rather have someone who can manage this as part of their hosting service. I’ve tried a few and they declined.

Oh well.

Thank,

Don

@ javaman1

Moving content, etc .. is not something that hosts want to become to be involved with, for many reasons..

I’ve been a part of recent content move, but that involved hundreds of domains BUT this particular customer is worth thousands of dollars of month to us. Money talks.

There are plenty of ppl that do “wordpress work” for a fee though.

@acimovic
I followed these instructions, and the migration to a new server ‘almost’ worked.

What this doesn’t say, is that BEFORE you do anything else, copy and save all of your text widget content. Then remove all of those text widgets. If you don’t do this, you risk the infamous ‘Error in Array … in widget.php’ which will lock you out of the new Admin. I learned this the hard way.

Follow the instructions for migration–it’s a bit more complicated than just exporting/importing your database.

After your new site is operational, reinstall the text widgets with the information you saved from the old site.

With the additional text widget step, this procedure works for me and WP2.6.1.

@acimovic.

download your “uploads” dir.. and export your posts into an XML file..

do a fresh install of wordpress on your new server and export your XML file there.. Should work flawlesslyy.. it worked for me.. =]

Ok yall. I have been trying to migrate my wordpress website over to another server for several hours now and finally figured everything out!

Here are the steps I took:

1. Copy the home directory over to the new server.
2. Create a new database and add a user to that database.
3. Add the new database settings to the wp-config.php file.
4. Export your database from the old server using phpMyAdmin to your local hard drive.
5. Open/Edit the database file using WordPad! Update the url paths throughout the entire file to match the new directory paths of the new server in case they have changed. In WordPad, Go to Edit, Replace. This will open up a search and replace window. In my case I had to update the file path from home/gillette/public_html/gillettewyomingblog to home/gwblog/public_html. Once you update all the file paths, just save the file.
6. Now import the file to the new server using phpMyAdmin.
7. This is where I got hung up. I got everything working ok up to this point. When I went to my website, the main page loaded just fine and I could see all my recent posts. But when I would click on ANY post, category or link to another section in my blog I would get a blank page!!! So I finally figured out that you have to go to your WordPress Admin, Options, Permalinks, then make sure your Common Options are still set to the way you had them before on the other server and just hit Update Permalink Structure and WaLa! Everything is now working properly on my blog and all the links work. Hallelujah!

I hope this helps someone. It took me several hours to get “my method” to work. There was no need to download the posts to any xml files or anything like that.

Here’s my blog: Gillette Wyoming Blog

I hope this helps someone. It took me several hours to get “my method” to work.

That’s great to know. Next time I need to waste several hours I will ignore the instructions too.

That’s great to know. Next time I need to waste several hours I will ignore the instructions too.

Which instructions? If you mean the export/import “instructions”, you will lose site data like your “blogroll”.

I have done several migrations recently and I find rapidtronics steps required.

Guys

I’ve just done this in a couple of hours … one host to another and a new domain. It really ain’t that difficult.

1. use the wp-db-backup plugin to get a copy of the database from your OLD host. I took the option of saving it to a local .zip file on my desktop
2. set up wordpress on your NEW host – but don’t bother posting anything. doing this saves faffing around with config files later to point to the right database
3. copy over the 3 main wordpress subdirectories to (wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes) from one host to the other. If you don’t have direct shell access and would need to go via your local pc, look at this utility https://www.decodephp.com/2007/12/04/web-based-ftp-sync-tool-written-in-php/. I got around 1GB transferred over in 5 mins!
4. expand the zip file of the database you got in step 1 and open it in notepad++ (really, get it, it’s easier). Search and replace your old blog url with your new one. Also, if needed, search and replace your old admin email address with a new one. Now save the file and zip it up again.
5. launch phpadmin on your NEW host. Drop all your wordpress tables. Now go to import and load the edited zip file.
6. wait …
7. now you should be able to go to your blog. More than likely you need to log back in again.
8. Only issues I had where with
a. wp-greet-box … so I deleted it
b. permalinks not working. I fixed this by just selecting the default, saving, then picking my preferred structure again!

That’s it …. around 400 entries and over 1000 images over in less than 2 hours.

@srdegnan

This worked well, except for one major issue. First, I had a problem with recompressing the SQL dump. I was able to do it after I edited the URLs, but when I tried to import the zipped SQL into the new host’s phpMyAdmin, MySQL threw an error that said that the file size did not match the value that was in the file header. So, the only way to work around that was to simply upload the raw, uncompressed SQL file that I had edited on my local machine. Then, it worked fine.

Thanks for the instructions. For me it really only took about an hour. Now that I’ve worked out my specific issues, these instructions will make transferring my wife’s blog much easier.