Quick Tip: How to Move a WordPress Site

I won’t go too in-depth here, but I will describe the steps you need to take to move a WordPress website to a different host.

1. Download all of the site files from the old host
2. Export the entire database WordPress is using. If you’re not sure how to do that, there are instructions here.
3. If there are existing files on the new host, back them up by downloading them. Do the same for any databases on the new host.
4. Upload the site files from the old host to the new one.
5. Create a new database on the new host. Each host is different, but you’ll have to create a database, a database user, and then give the database user all privileges on the new database.
6. Import the database from the old host to the new database.
7. Change the wp-config.php file info to the new database name, host, username, and password.

Some Things to Consider:

• Most hosts keep the database host as localhost but not all of them. If you’re not sure what your host is, you should contact the new host’s support.
• This is just moving WordPress to a new sever; I assume you’ve already pointed the domain. If you’re changing domains, you will also have to change all of the domain references in the WordPress database, most notably in the wp_options table (there are two references there). If you don’t change the wp_options table, your site will not work. The best way to change all of the references (most of which being in the posts table) is probably to do a Find/Replace on the .sql file in your favorite text editor after you complete step 2.
• If you’re moving a WordPress MU/Multisite install, you will also have to configure the sever to handle subdomains. The codex has instructions on how to do that here.