There may be situations when you would want to transfer your self hosted WordPress blog from one hosting provider to another. Some of them are:

• You are getting heavy traffic in your blog and want to upgrade to a better hosting plan and get rid of frequent downtimes.
• Your current hosting plan is on a shared environment and you want to migrate to a dedicated server.
• The technical support of your current host isn’t prompt and you want a better option.

Transfer Blog’s Hosting Provider

Here is a step by step guide on how you can transfer your self hosted WordPress blog from one host to another:

1. Sign up with a new and reputed hosting provider you know. Our blog is hosted with Doreo and here are some reasons why you should use Doreo for hosting your blog.

2. Once you have signed up for an account with the new hosting provider, wait for the account to get activated.

3. When the account is activated, you are ready for the transfer to begin.

4. Login to the FTP directory of your old host and take a complete backup of your blog’s files. Typically, you need to download the contents of the entire public_html folder to your computer.

5. Login to your WordPress blog and disable all the plugins. Next, optimize your database tables to reduce it’s size.

6. Now open the Cpanel of your old hosting account and go to “Phpmyadmin”. From here, generate a complete database backup of your blog in SQL format and download the backup file in your computer.

7. Login to the FTP account of your new hosting account and upload all the files that you downloaded in step 4 in the root directory.

8. Open the Cpanel of your new hosting account and create a new database. Most of the cpanels have a database wizard which you can follow to create the database, choose a password and add a database user. Assign the user all the priviledges and copy the details of this database in a notepad file. You need to copy the following:

• Name of the database.
• The user assigned to this database.
• The password of the user.

9. Remember you backed up the database in step 6. Open the cpanel of your new hosting account and go to “Phpmyadmin”. Select the database that you created in step 8.

10. After selecting the database, you will see that it does not contain any tables. Go to the import tab and import the old database into the new one.

Click “Browse” and then hit “Go”. Wait for a while and the import will be successfully completed. If you see an error message while importing the old database, then you need to reduce it’s size by optimizing the tables (refer step 5). If optimizing the tables do not work, contact the tech support of your new hosting provider.

11. Now open the FTP account of the new hosting account and download the wp-config.php file. Fill in the new database details which you created with the new host.

After that, upload the file back in the root installation directory of the new hosting account.

12. Okay, the hard part is over. Now login to the domain control panel of your website and change the domain name servers, pointing to the new host. Ask your new hosting provider for the name servers and update the same in your domain control panel.

13. As soon as you update the name servers, your blog will go down. Don’t panic as this is perfectly normal. Wait for some time for the DNS changes to propagate across the Internet (normally 24-48 hours).

That’s it. You have successfully migrated and transfered your WordPress blog from one host to another.

Troubleshooting

1. I cannot access my site even after 24 hours when i changed the name servers in my domain control panel.

Clear your browser cache memory and restart your browser before you preview your site. You may have to change the Windows hosts file or flush the DNS cache. Here is detailed guide on previewing your site before making DNS changes.

2. I get the message “Error establishing a database connection”.

Have you correctly filled up the database details at step 10 ? Did you uploaded the wp-config.php file in your new FTP account ?

3. My Site has been transferred to the new host but the WordPress visual editor freezes when I log in.

This has occured due to partial upload of some files. To solve this, download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org. Next, delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folder one by one and upload the fresh versions. Take your time to upload the files and watch carefully for partial uploads. The partial uploads occurs when you are using a slow internet connection like wireless router or Wifi.

4. I still cannot access my site. How do I make things Work again ?

If you still cannot access your site after 24-48 hours, there is something that you may have missed out in the tutorial. Contact the tech support of your new hosting account. If you wish to revert to your old host, simply change the domain name servers that point to the old hosting account.

Let us know if you were able to successfully migrate your blog from one host to another through a comment.