Shypy’s Weblog

I recently changed my webhosting provider. Hence, I had to move all my sites from the old host to the new one. Doing this with static HTML/CSS sites is simple enough. But for a database backed script like wordpress it can turn out to be quite tricky.

I’ve heard this question being asked quite often by friends on Personal Messenger and on webmaster forums. That is why I made a step-by-step tutorial on how it is done.

1. Find out the name of the MySql database you’re using for the wordpress blog. Download this database to your localhost. If your host offers cPanel, then you can use phpMyAdmin to do this.

2. Open phpMyAdmin. Select the name of your database. Click on the “export” tab. Select all. Export them as an SQL file and save it on your PC.

3. Copy all the wordpress files and save them on your localhost. This includes all the files and folders in the directory for your domain. So you should have a bunch of files, and the wp-admin, wp-includes and wp-content directories. The image makes it clear:

4. Now change the DNS settings for your domain and point it to the nameservers of your new web host.

5. Create an addon domain (if required) with the new host and copy all the files and folders from your previous installation. Move the folders as they are. They should include the files and folders showing in the image above.

6. Now it is time to work with databases. Create a new MySql database and assign a user to it. You can do this easily from cPanel.

7. Open up the wp-config.php file from the root directory of your domain/blog. Edit the name of the database, username and password to match the new ones you just created in step 6.

8. Remember the database you downloaded way back in step 1? Time for it to be uploaded to the new server/host. Open up phpMyAdmin. Select the name of the new database you created for wordpress and click on the import tab.

9. Browse to the saved .sql databse and click on Go to upload it.

10. Voila! You have moved your wordpress blog to a new host!

This may take some time, but it is the most fool-proof way to move your wordpress sites/blogs to a new hosting provider/server.