How to Host Your Existing WordPress Site on a New Hosting Service
In case you’re wondering, yes, WordPress is a CMS (content management system). It’s what powers all the content on this website, be it our blog posts, our gallery or our contact page. Now that you’ve signed up for a new hosting service, it’s time to take care of your old one. In this article, we will show you just that, how to move your WordPress site to a new hosting service.
The Good News
You’ve probably already guessed it by now, but we’re pretty pleased that you’ve decided to switch to a new host. With a brand new domain and all-new hosting service, you’ll be able to experience an entirely new website. Not only that, but the move is completely free.
WordPress itself is platform-independent, so it will automatically work with your new host, no matter what hosting service you choose. There’s also a plugin that’s similar to WordPress called Jekyll which is popular among writers and blog owners. If you’re looking for a lightweight, free option, then Jekyll is usually the way to go. Another great option is Nano, which is free and open source, and runs on any device, even smartphones. You’ll find plenty of information about all these options in the following links.
The Bad News
Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news in store for you. Moving a WordPress site to a new host is not as straightforward as you’d think. The good news is, it’s not that hard and it doesn’t have to be. In this case, we’ll need you to do some research and figure out what you’re going to need to modify or customize before the migration is complete. In case you’re wondering, some of the things you might need to fix or reconfigure include: your store’s backend (the administrative section of your website), installing security plugins, choosing a new theme (if needed) and more.
This is a lot of work and it’s not something that you’ll be able to do overnight. It might still take you a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on how familiar you are with WordPress and how much work you need to do. When you’re finally done, you’ll have a fully functional WordPress site that looks just like the one you had before.
Preparing For The Migrations
Now that you’re all geared up and ready to migrate your WordPress site, it’s time to take care of a few details. First, you’ll need to download a copy of your old website’s content, then upload it to your new host. To take care of this, you can use a tool like My Media or Contentful which make the process of moving content between different hosts easy.
Migration Tip
As a WordPress adminstrator, you’ll have to choose one method of importing your old content and using it on your new site. If you have a lot of content, then you might want to consider using a tool like WP Migrate Pro to make the process easier. This tool will help you move all your posts, pages, custom fields and more between your old and new hosts. What’s great about this tool is that it’s completely automated, so you’ll just have to enter the URLs of your old and new sites and it will do the rest. It’s a great option for people whose content is already built out on their existing blogs or websites. There’s also an option for those who want to take the time to manually copy and paste their content between the two sites. If you decide on this route, then make sure to back up your content before you start the process.
The First Step
Once you’ve downloaded your old website’s content, it’s time to move it to your new host. To do this, you’ll need to log in to your existing site’s dashboard (also known as the WordPress admin area) and click on the “Up Migration” button. This will download a.zip file for you to upload to your new host. Remember: this is a one-time process that will only need to be done once.
On the next screen, you’ll want to click on the blue button labeled “Upload Files.” This will open up a file manager for you to navigate to the.zip file you downloaded earlier. Once you’ve found the file, click on it and this will open up the upload page.
The last step is to replace the old host’s URL with the new one in the “CNAME” field and click on “Save Changes.” This will complete the migration process.
That’s it. As a WordPress adminstrator, you’ll now have a fully fledged and functioning WordPress site on a new host. Congratulations!