How to Migrate Your WordPress Website From One Hosting Provider to Another?

Before you start with the migration process

Today you can choose from a wide variety of hosting providers which offer specially designed hosting solutions for your WordPress website. The main difference is in pricing, reliability and loading time. Basically, you get what you pay for.

There are hosting providers with very cheap hosting packages like Hostgator, but they offer very little resources for that price. If you are serious about your WordPress website I suggest you avoid Hostgator in a long curve. We noticed that we usually only get support queries from people using cheap hosting providers as the demo content import can time-out due to limited resources. Their support is also unreliable and there is no intention to fix or help with basic server settings such as max execution time, which is important for importing demo content, max upload file, which is needed to upload the theme, and in our example the import file for migrating your site. Usually, these files are larger than 200MB and cheap hosting providers don’t allow to set max upload file to more than 32MB.

We recommend BlueHost, which is the best hosting provider considering price and performance.

While you are migrating the site maybe you also need to reconsider the design for your website. We offer nice blog themes with great design and SEO capabilities.

First step: Export current WordPress site

Second step: Install WordPress on your new host

Third step: Import migration file

 

First step: Export current WordPress Website

The first step is to backup your current website. For the migration, we will use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. This plugin is very easy to use (one click for export and one click for import). First, navigate to your plugin page in the WordPress admin panel. Now search for the All-in-One WP Migration plugin and install it.

Now that the All-in-One WP Migration plugin is installed and activated you can navigate to the plugin options.

We have a lot of options for exporting the website, but only an option to export to the file is free. If you wish to export to other external providers such as Dropbox, Google drive, Google cloud or Amazon, you will have to buy the premium version of the plugin. Premium version will cost you $94, but for basic websites (like blogs for instance), the free version is all you need.

If you are only changing the hosting provider and the domain of your website will remain the same, you just need to export the file. If you are also changing the domain name you will also need to change current domain name with a new one. With this plugin, this is also an easy task. You just need to click find and replace option and replace your old domain with a new one.

The last step is to export the file. Simply click Export to file and wait while the file is being generated.

Second step: Install WordPress on your new web host

We will assume that you already bought a hosting plan with the BlueHost hosting provider. Log in to your cPanel hosting account with the credentials you received via email.

When you are successfully logged in search for Softaculous apps installer and click WordPress.

Click the Install Now button.

1. Choose the version you want to install – select the latest version of the WordPress, usually, this is the default option.
2. Choose Protocol – I suggest you select the https protocol. Better hosting providers such as BlueHost already have shared SLL certificates installed on the server, so you can use SLL free of charge.
3. Choose Domain – select your domain
4. In Directory – leave this field empty if you wish to install the WordPress on the root of the domain (usually that is the best option). If you wish to use your installation at yourdomain.com/blog you need to enter “blog” into this field. Your URL for the installation will then be https://yourdomain.com/blog
5. Site Settings – enter your site name and your site description.
6. Admin Account – enter your administrator username and password. Use a strong password with letters and symbols! Please be careful to enter the correct email address, otherwise, you won’t be able to restore your password.
7. Select Plugin(s) – I suggest you install the classic editor plugin since Guttenberg can be a bit overwhelming if you are just starting with WordPress.
8. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the install button.

Now you need to wait for Softaculous to install WordPress. After the process is done, log in to your new WordPress installation.

Third step: Import migration file

First, you will need to repeat the first step and install the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. After the install, navigate to the plugin options and select import.

As you can see the current max upload file is set to 256MB. Below is a video on how to increase max upload file and a few other basic options via cPanel.

Select import from file and upload your export file from your previous WordPress installation.

After the file is uploaded click Proceed button and the import of your old WordPress website will start. Do not close the browser while an import is in progress or import will fail.

When the import is done just click the finish button. You have successfully imported your WordPress website from the old hosting provider to the new one. You just need to set one more thing before you can start using your new website.

Navigate to Settings-> Permalinks.

1. Select Plain options and click the save button.
2. Select the desired link structure and click the save button.
3. Your permalinks are now reset and your blog is ready to be used.

Thank you for reading this tutorial. If you have any questions please post them to the comment section below and we will try to help you with further instructions.