What is a Web Hosting Service?
An online platform that allows other individuals or groups of individuals to make their website available to the rest of the world through World Wide Web(WWW).
Why You May Need to Move/Migrate Your Website to A New Host?
There are a number of a reasons why you might not want to keep running your website under a certain hosting programme in case of which you might have to migrate to another hosting service. Some very common reasons are;
- You started running your website under a certain service when you were a beginner and now that you are progressing, you need a web host service which offers more than just what your current host is offering.
- The yearly or monthly cost that your host is charging you keeps increasing or has hidden charges that are not affordable for you.
- You want a more reliable host because your current host isn’t providing you the security that you find necessary.
- The host you are working with is problematic and you are, in any way, not satisfied with it.
How People May Choose To Perform The Task
Now many people are not familiar with how to migrate from one host to another therefore, they choose to let a professional person perform the task for you.
Again, the problem may arise that you can’t find a reliable person for it or the amount they are charging you is not affordable. In case of which, you will need to do the task yourself. It is tricky and daunting task but once you get to know how to do it, it’s not as difficult as it may seem.
Migrating Your WordPress Website To A New Web Hosting server
Now let me tell you the steps by which you will be moving your website to a new host.
Step 1: Backup All The Files of Your Website Manually
For any regular practice on your website, you might want to backup your data as for safety. But for migrating your website, you will definitely NEED to do this. Now, if you’re wondering how to do this, there are two waye to do it manually. First one is with Filezilla software and the other one is through your site cpanel.
So we will do it with the second ways which is easy to follow backup of your wordpress site.
1) Go to your website cpanel and enter your website username and password provided by your host.
2) once you login to cpanel click on file manager in the File section and click go.so I window will be open where all website files are located.
3) click on “Select all” checkbox and right click on select files and select “compress”.
4) When you click compress then all the files will be compress with a .zip extension
5) Now download the .zip extension file to your computer by click right on the folder and select download button.
6) Make a new folder on your computer and paste them there. Now, depending on how much data you have on your website, this may take quite a while. During this time of the download, you can go ahead with the step 2.
Step 2: Export The WordPress Database
Now you need to export your database. Go to cpanel account and open your phpMyAdmin application and select your WordPress installation database from the left sidebar and select the export option on the menu.
Now click the Go button and wait for the process to complete. Begin Step 3 when both Step 1 and Step 2 are complete.
Step 3: Create The WordPress Database On Your New Host Server
To move your database to another webhost opens your new Hosting Cpanel details provided by webhost. First you need to make a database then you can import your SQl data into your new created database.You can create this databse by following these steps:
1. First, open MySQL Database and create a new database for your website with a proper name.
2. Create a new MySQL user and choose a secured password.
3. Now add this user account to the new database.
4. Now note down the new user, password and database name with you.
Step 4: Edit The wp-config.php File
Go to the folder where you saved the data from your first web host on your personal computer and extract the file. There will be a wp-config.php file that links the access between your database and wordpress. Save a copy of this file somewhere else on your computer. You will need this to restore the changes you make incase anything goes wrong.
Now open the original file with any text editor that you like to use and make the following changes.
Change The Database Name:
Look for the following line:
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘db_name’);
The DB_NAME portion of this line will contain your database name, change it to the name you just created.
Change The Database Username:
Below this, look for the line.
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘db_user’);
Now the DB_USER part of this will contain your database username. Change it to the username you just created.
Change The Secured Password:
Now, look for the line.
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘db_pass’);
The DB_PASSWORD part contains the password to your database. Change it to the password you just created.
Save the changes to this file and close it.
Step 5: Import Your Database:
Now that you have all your changes and database saved, you can begin your import process. Open the phpMyAdmin application from your cPanel software and select your new database from the list given on the left sidebar. Open it and select the Import option.
In the section saying, File to Import click on the Choose File button and select the SQL file you exported earlier.
Un-tick the checkbox of Partial Import. Also, make sure that the selected format is SQL and then click the Go button. The database import will begin as soon as you click, the time depends on the size of the files.
Step 6: Upload The WordPress Files To Your New Host
1) Now that you have all the changes saved, you can begin uploading the files. Open the cpanel of new hosting go to File manager and open public_html folder. you will notice there will be no files.
2) Now click on the upload button a new window will be open then click on the choose file button and select a zip file of your old wordpress website with the change you made in wp-config.php file.
Once it complete goto your files tab and click on the .zip file you just uploaded and right click to extract it. It will takes some time to extract all the files.
3) Now change the name server in domain registrar replace the old host nameserver with the new host nameserver.it will take 24-48 hours to updates .sometime it take less time to update depend on domain registrar.once the namesever update you website will be in running mode again.
Step 8: The Final Touches
Now is the time that you can delete all the files on your previous host and all the downloaded data but to stay on the safer side, you should keep the original version of the wp-config.php file and the data exported just in case you need to remigrate.
Here is the video of all the above step for those whose can not read a blog post.
So you see, divided into simple steps, this process is not at all as difficult as it may seem. You just need to be careful through each step while migrating wordpress website to new web hosting server and save yourself from lot of trouble doing it yourself.