Move a WordPress site

A WordPress site is two things: the files (WordPress itself, themes, plugins, uploads) and a MySQL database with the posts and settings. A move copies both and tells WordPress where the database and the site now are. What to arrange with the old provider first: Moving a website.

Files and database

1. Create the site at the new hosting and copy all files of the old site into its folder.
2. Export the database at the old hosting, in phpMyAdmin with Export, to an .sql file.
3. Create a database and a user at the new hosting. Give it a long random password and note the database name, the user name and the host.
4. Open phpMyAdmin of the new database and import the .sql file with Import.

wp-config.php

In the root folder of the site, set the new database credentials:

vi wp-config.php

/** The name of the database for WordPress */ define( 'DB_NAME', 'example_db' ); /** Database username */ define( 'DB_USER', 'example_user' ); /** Database password */ define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'a-long-random-password' ); /** Database hostname */ define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );

The address of the site

If the domain changes too, set the new address in the same file. These two lines win over the address stored in the database:

define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://www.example.com' ); define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://www.example.com' );

.htaccess

WordPress sends every address that is not a real file or folder to its index.php. On Apache this needs the standard block in .htaccess in the root folder; more about the file in .htaccess:

# BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress

Settings and links

Log in at https://www.example.com/wp-admin, open Settings, General, check WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) and save. Posts still contain links and image paths with the old domain. With WP-CLI on the server, replace them in the whole database, first as a dry run:

wp search-replace 'https://old.example.com' 'https://www.example.com' --dry-run

Then run it again without --dry-run. Old addresses that visitors still use should answer 301 to the new ones, see Redirects.

Article authors: Andrei Olegovich, Klavdiya Kondakova