Migrate Wordpress Website Manually: Futureroots

Every one of us has tried using a plugin and believe me … most of us failed to understand the complexity of the transferring the website from one hosting account to another and the plugin added to the confusion.

What next?

You can simply transfer your website from one hosting account to another using your cPanel account. You don’t need to be a developer or a programmer to make things happen. If you believe us ….. it is a simple process. There is not a lot of things to manage. All you need is an adaptive mind.

Check all the full details on how to transfer your website by clicking this link or you can simply watch this video to understand the process.

Wordpress Migration is a simple process has 2 phases:

Downloading Backup:

1. Login into the cPanel of existing website.
2. Locate and open the file manager folder.
3. Click to open public_html
4. Locate wp-content folder. Right click and compress it.
5. Once the compression is complete. Download this file.
6. Locate wp-config file and download it as well.
7. Now, we need to download the database. For that, go to the cpanel home page(click on one level up).
8. Locate and open PhpMyAdmin and click on the data base. You will see there are a lot of entries. Scroll down to the bottom and select all. Once selected, use the export option to download this. On the next page it will show you the option to download the database, select .SQL as a download format.

With the download, your work at the current server is done.

Uploading Backup

1. Open cPanel account and Install Wordpress.
2. Click on file manager.
3. Open the public_html
4. Go to file manager First >>>>>> DELETE THE WP-CONTENT folder.
6. Upload your wp-content.zip folder and extract all details. Once you see the folder has been extracted. Delete the .zip folder. SAVES Space on your server.
8. Now, we need to upload the .SQL database that we downloaded. For that, go to the cpanel home page(click on PHPmyAdmin). The first step here is to DELETE the existing database of the new wordpress account. Click on the database and select all existing entries. Just to the right of it you will see a drop down option click and select the drop option. This will delete the database.
9. With that, we can upload the database we downloaded from old hosting account.
10. Click the import option and import the .SQL file.
11. We have now replicated all the entries of the old website but wait the website will not work. Why because the name of the new data base created will not match the data base prefix mentioned in the wp-config file.
12. The Fix: For this, copy the first part of the database prefix. If you don’t know what database prefix is, go back to phpmyadmin and open the database. you will see all the entries with an intial prefix value. Copy that prefix part. We need to edit this in the wp-config file.
13. Go back to file manager, locate wp-config and click edit. Scroll down and find the $table_prefix option and edit it with new prefix. Click save.
14. Update the DNS of the new hosting account with your domain registrar and voila the you have successfully migrated the website.

If you have followed these steps correctly. Your website should be up and running.

DONE. Refresh your website.

Additional Steps: Migration from Test Domain to Main Site

Note: There is a difference between changing the domain name and changing the hosting server. If you are a developer and would like to move the wordpress website from test account to primary domain name hosting and domain. There are some more steps that you need to follow to complete the migration process. Follow them here:
1. Go To PHPmyadmin and click on the database you just uploaded.
2. Navigate to the Databaseprefix_options.
3. Edit the site_url info and update the domain name.
4. Edit the Home info and update the domain name.