I needed to move a WordPress site to another server the other day to improve performance, so I thought I'd write down the steps in case others might find it helpful. Here are some simple instructions, please follow at your own risk (there's no lifeguard on duty).
- Access your domain manager and add an A Record to your DNS settings - I recommend ‘temp’. So, if your domain is example.com, you’ll add temp.example.com. To complete this step, you’ll need to know the IP address of the new server.
- Associate the new ‘temp’ version of your domain with the new server (may have to wait an hour or so for propagation to occur).
- Install WordPress on the new server to the ‘temp’ version of your domain
- Make a backup copy of your database (a SQL file)
- Upload the SQL file to the _db_backups folder on the new server (at the root level)
- Restore the database associated with the ‘temp’ version of your domain
- you may need to open your wp-config.php file and change the database references to match the newly restored database.
define('DB_NAME', 'your database name here');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'your database name here');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your database password here');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'your database hostname here - it’s usually longer than the username');
- Try your site at temp.example.com - if it works proceed. If not, you may have to call your hosting provider for assistance.
- Login to the DNS manager for your domain and change the A Record for the primary domain (example.com) to point the ‘@’ record to the new IP address.
- Delete the ‘temp’ record.
- Login to the Hosting Admin for your old server and remove example.com from the associated domains
- login to the Hosting Admin for the new server (you may have to wait an hour or so to do this step) and associate example.com with the server. That’s it - wait for your domain change to propogate - you may see weird stuff for a couple of hours - be patient.
