Why would you want to move a WordPress website to a new host? There are many reasons. The most common reason is that your website performance is sub-par and is loads too slowly. This can hurt your users’ experiences on your site, and thus affect your SEO as your ranking in Google will suffer. Other reasons are: your site’s form notifications have email delivery issues, or your paying too much, or you just don’t like the customer service from your existing host.
Here are the steps to move your WordPress website to a new host.
Step 1 – Back up your files
Log into your website host’s cPanel and access the file manager. Find your root folder that holds your website files (usually called “public_html” or “htdocs” or “www.”) – you’ll see a lot of loose files along with wp-content, wp-admin, and wp-includes.
Select all the files and archive or zip them, and download the zipped folder. (.zip)
Step 2 – Export your website’s database
- In your host’s cPanel go to PHPmyAdmin
- Export your database as an SQL file
Step 3 – Purchase a web hosting plan with a reputable WordPress host.
If you want your site to have fast loading times and smooth performance without paying a lot, we recommend Siteground, rated one of the top WordPress website hosts in the world. Siteground’s server speeds are hard to beat (we’ve worked with a lot of web hosting companies over the years).
Set up your new hosting plan
- Create new database on new hosted server
- Use cPanel to access phpMyAdmin
- Import your saved database to your new database
Step 4 – Upload your site files to the new file manager
Upload your zipped or compressed site files, and unzip them to be loose in your root folder of the file manager.
Step 5 – Update wp-config.php
Open the file manager and locate the wp-config file. Update the file with your new database info, including:
- define(‘DB_NAME, ‘db_name’);
- define(‘DB_USER, ‘db_user’);
- define(‘DB_PASSWORD, ‘db_pass’);
Final step – Update your Domain Name Server (DNS)
Log in to your domain registrar and change your domain settings to point to the new host. (See video)
Contact us if you need help with moving your WordPress website to a very fast web host that provides great customer service.
