How to Change Servers for WordPress? WordPress Migration Tutorial

Do You Think WordPress Migration is Difficult?Actually, migrating WordPress yourself is quite simple. You just need to understand the principle and then follow the steps.

The Principle of WordPress Migration

WordPress migration is similar to moving house in real life. Website data is transferred from one server to another. What we need to do is package all the WordPress website data, copy it from the old server, and move it to the new server. For example, when you move from an old house to a new one, you hire a moving company to transport all your belongings to the new place. After some unpacking and organizing, the move is complete. WordPress migration is even simpler than a physical move. Below, Naiba will introduce several common methods for WordPress migration.

Common WordPress Migration Methods

Migrate Using All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP MigrationThis plugin has been introduced by Naiba before and is very useful.

Steps on the Old Server

1. Log in to the Admin Dashboard on the old server, go to the Plugins page, and install All-in-One WP Migration.2. Activate the plugin and export all data from the website on the old server.3. Download the backed-up website file to your local computer.

Steps on the New Server

Next, we proceed to the new server. There are several scenarios for the new server:

1. If you purchased Shared Hosting, for example,SiteGround、GreenGeeks、Hostingerthis type, they will typically set up the website for you by default. You just need to click 'One-Click Install WordPress' in the control panel.
2. If you purchased a VPS, you need to create the website for migration yourself in the control panel. For example, in Baota Panel, follow the steps shown in the image below.

1. Add a website normally in Baota Panel, then install a blank WordPress site on this website.

You might encounter an issue here because the domain's DNS hasn't been pointed to the new server yet, or the DNS change hasn't propagated. This might prevent you from installing the blank WordPress. In this case, you can modify your local hosts file to resolve the domain directly to the new server's IP address. (If you don't know how to modify the hosts file, please search for a tutorial on Baidu, Bing, or Google.)

2. After installation, go to the Plugins page in the Admin Dashboard, install All-in-One WP Migration, and activate it. 3. Navigate to the All-in-One WP Migration menu, select 'Import', and upload the backup file you downloaded to your computer earlier.At this point, you might get a prompt about a 50MB size limit. If your backup file from earlier is over 200MB, you won„t be able to import it directly. Therefore, you need to find a way to bypass the upload size limit. Method 1: Refer to the method mentioned in the previously introduced article titled “Modify All-in-One WP Migration 50MB size limit"Partial content; Method 2: Install the all-in-one-wp-migration-unlimited-extension.zip extension. The all-in-one-wp-migration-unlimited-extension is paid; you can view the official price by clicking the GET UNLIMITED button. Naiba has purchased the genuine version, and you can also choose to pay to download it.Genuine extension download 4. Click the PROCEED button to restore the backup.Prompt 'Your site has been imported successfully!' indicates the backup restoration is successful. The next steps are as follows:

1. Set up website pseudo-static rules (re-save the pseudo-static rules in the backend to automatically generate pseudo-static files for Apache servers; for Baota Panel, remember to enable pseudo-static in the website settings);
2. Resolve the domain name IP to the new server;
3. After the domain name resolution takes effect, configure the SSL security certificate;
4. Change the website URL in the settings to https.

How about it? Isn't using All-in-One WP Migration for backup particularly convenient?

One-Click Migration Using Baota Panel

If both your old server and new server are built using Baota Panel, you can use the one-click migration method.Search for 'one-click migration' in the Baota Panel software store, then install the Baota One-Click Migration API. There is an official tutorial included, so Naiba won't introduce it here.

Manual Migration

Although plugins and APIs are convenient, these simple methods may fail under certain circumstances, so it's still necessary to master the purely manual migration method. The basic steps are as follows; please execute them according to the actual situation:

1. Back up website files and database from the old server's management backend to local;
2. Bind the domain name to be migrated on the new server;
3. Upload the backed-up website files to the root directory via the new server's backend management panel;
4. Create a database on the new server and import the database file backed up from the old website;
5. Modify the wp-config.php file on the new server to update the database information created in step 4 into the configuration file;
6. Modify domain name resolution, configure SSL certificate, pseudo-static, and other follow-up operations.