Web Host
You have a fully established website that gets a lot of traffic and generates a lot of revenues. But what if you feel a need to change your web host due to any reason whether poor up time, bad service or simply changing platform from Linux to Windows?
Many bloggers or online business owners have no such technical knowledge of transferring entire CMS based website from one web host to another server. You can often find such projects on freelancer.com or other such services asking to help them with the transfer.
So here are the simple steps to make it happen.
Backup website Files
Go to your control panel and simply compress all the web pages, folder structure and any downloadable files that you provide through file manager. You can easily find the file manager option right on front page when you log in to the control panel. In file manager you can find an option for “Compress” on header section. You need to select all the files and folder that you want to transfer in order to compress.
This will simply create a ZIP file of all the files on your current web server. Just download that file and keep it safe on your local computer.
Database Backup – Dump File
If you are using dynamic website that stores all the data in a database, you will need to take the database back up too.
In your control panel front page, click on PHPMyAdmin icon under Databases section and select the database that you are using for the website you want to transfer.
Simply click on “Export” button after selecting the database and you will be provided an option for various file formats before downloading. Select any desired format and save it on your local computer.
Now you have all the important things to make the transfer happen. There are only these two important things that you need to have with you.
Moving to a new web server
Now upload the ZIP file that contains compressed files and folders from your old web host on to your new web server account. If you do this through an FTP, most probably you will not find an option to extract the ZIP file. So do it from your file manager in control panel.
Once you extract all the files, you will be able to view your website already, but you will see a database error on the home page.
Nothing is wrong with that, now you just need to create a database and import the Dump file.
Creating Database and Tables
Go to database section in your control panel front page. Click on Mysql Databases button and simply create a new database. Note down the database name on a temperory notepad file.
Create a user for that database. Add the newly created user to that database. You will find all these options right on the same page under MySql Databases.
Then open PHPMyAdmin and go the the newly created database. Simply import the Dump file that you have from your old server and all the tables will be automatically created like before on your new database.
Configuring
Now you need to configure your website to use the new database. This is pretty simple because normally in most of the open source CMS you will find a separate config file that has details about database, its user and password.
You just need to enter the new details, new database name, new user and password.
Warning
The whole process above is simple and have been tried many a times by me and hence it works. But about the configuration file, if you are using some odd open source CMS then it might not have a config file right out of the box for you to edit. If you are using a custom PHP script then it can have a config file.
So before transferring, make sure that you find a configuration file which is important to configure new details.
