How To Restore, Move Or Migrate A Website

How To Restore A Site, Move Or Migrate A Website From One Host To Another

There are many reasons to migrate a website. If you are changing the hosting provider due to many reasons, you would want to migrate or move your website. This include moving the website files from the current host to a new one, and connecting the domain to the new server accordingly. Find in this post, steps for migrating or moving a website from server to server or from one host to another.

Follow these steps to fully migrate a website:

Make a backup of the website at the old server: You can backup the website's files manually, download the files to your local computer and upload to your new server. But you can also do it remotely. There are many plugins available for WordPress with which you can backup a website to the cloud. You can use any of them to backup the website to cloud from the old server. Example plugins include: BackWp up, Backuply, Wp Vivid, UpdraftPlus, etc.

Setup the Domain & Hosting at the New Server: Next, you'd setup your domain name and hosting on the new server. This would include binding/adding your existing domain to new the hosting plan you purchased on the new server, setting up the DNS or nameservers accordingly for  your existing website.

Install a New Version of the CMS: If you are using a content management system like WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop, e.t.c. especially the ones that have plugins for taking backups, the easiest way to migrate your website is to install a clean version of the CMS. Setup everything as you normally would when setting up a new website on the server. Set up a username and password. This is to temporarily allow you login to the website from where you will carry out the restoration or migration. If you are restoring or migrating the site with the database, your old login credentials will be restored. Hence, you need to keep that information handy in order to be able to login to the website when the restoration or migration process is completed. You could manually install the new website by downloading and re-uploading its files to the appropriate directories on your server. This would normally be the public_html or htdocs within your server's root directory. If you are installing a CMS like WordPress, you would have to set up the configuration parameters, especially in the wp_config file, and setup a database which should be connected to your new website. Alternatively, you could use the app installer in cPanel or in your web host to do this.

Login to Your Website's Dashboard & Make The Changes: Now that you have installed a clean version of the website, the next step would be to login to the dashboard to make the restore operation.

If you are on WordPress, you can login via www.yourdomain.com/wp-login or www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

Once you have logged in, head on to Plugins, Add new, then search for the backup plugin you used to backup the old site and install it.

If you are restoring from a local version of the backup, go to the backup/restore section of the plugin, select the file you downloaded to your local computer earlier (usually in zip archive format) and upload it. The restore operation will automatically start after you click the restore button. Wait while your website is restored. After a few seconds to some minutes depending on the size of the website, the website will be successfully restored.

If you are restoring from a remote location, you have to setup the plugin to point to the same location and directory as the one you backed up the old website to. After you have set it up, click to re-scan the directory. This will show a list of all backups you've previously done on the website.

Now click 'Restore' to start restoring the website. Follow the prompts and wait for a few minutes for the restore operation to complete.