Step 1 ⊶ Make a Backup

Description

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Moving WordPress
Step 1 ჻ Backup
Step 2 ჻ Move
Step 3 ჻ Reconnect
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Making a backup is like packing up your house and moving to a new one, except once it’s backed up we can duplicate the site an infinite amount of times across unlimited domains using that single backup with very little effort. The WordPress site you wish to move from the SOURCE (existing) hosting to the TARGET (new) hosting consists of 2 main parts as referenced above, this is what you’re going to be creating a backup of.

  1. A database backup using mysqldump or PHPMyAdmin
  2. A zip or tar of the DocumentRoot

Use *one* of the following methods to create a full backup. It does not matter which, the end result is identical.

Doing The Work

Plugin Method
  1. Download Simple Backup
  2. In your WordPress Admin Panel go to: Plugins –> Add New –> Upload plugin –> Choose file –> choose ‘simple-backup.zip’
  3. Install and activate the plugin
  4. In your WordPress Admin Panel go to: Tools –> Backup Manager
  5. See screenshots for plugin settings, only the first settings tab is required to successfully create a backup.

    6. wp-root

    wp-root

    wp-root

    wp-root

  6. Click the blue “Create WordPress Backup” button at the top of the screen
  7. Download the 2 backup files produced, one is the database dump, the other is the DocumentRoot zipped or tarred up.

    8. backup-2015-10-23-201051.tar.gz - 37.40 MB - 2015-10-23 8:08:53 PM AZOST
    db_backup_2015-10-23_201050.sql - 534.67 kB - 2015-10-23 8:08:20 PM AZOST

Manual Method

Notice: This method may require administrative “root” or sudo privileges and/or a database administrator account (DBA) to successfully complete.

(Part 1 – Database dump)
This method only works with SSH or command line access to the Linux system hosting your site and a valid DBA account on your MySQL or MariaDB.

  1. Login to your SOURCE (existing) hosting via SSH
  2. Create a directory called “site_move” mkdir site_move
  3. Move into this newly created directly cd site_move
  4. Create a database dump mysqldump -u username -ppassword database_name > database_name.sql

    5. There is no space between the p’s above in -ppassword, this is intended and is not a typo

(Part 2 – Backup DocumentRoot)
On most Unix-like operating systems the DocumentRoots for most sites will be under /var/www, your particular situation may vary but this is a good starting point

  1. Find your sites DocumentRoot, for our example we’re using /var/www/example.org/ as the DocumentRoot of our WordPress site
  2. After login cd site_move; sudo tar -cvzf /var/www/example.org example.org.tar.gz
  3. After this command successfully completes, you should have 2 files in your “site_move” folder:

    4. a. database_name.sql
    b. example.org.tar.gz

Step 2 ⇝
Last Modified: 19 Apr, 2023 at 09:24:02