Apr
22
Wordpress (WP) is a very popular content management system (CMS) that many websites are developed with. It’s not just “blogging” sites but all kinds of websites. There are other popular CMSs such as Joomla but I seem to find more and more sites are WP based on the market today. They don’t necessarily have have to be a blog, although many are. In many cases you would not even know the site you are visiting is based on a blog-type platform.
So this brings me to my point relating to the transfer of a recently purchased website. The domain gets pushed to the registrar of your choice and then you move the site’s files to your own host and make the ‘connection’ so to say by re-pointing the nameservers at your domain registrar to your host. Each site is different, some just being basic static htm files, others being dynamic with scripts and others connecting to databases that need to also be moved. WP incorporates a lot of this and has it’s own little set of nuances to deal with when moving.
I’ve moved quite a few and have searched up and down through the wordpress support forums for advice when I apparently screwed something up and ended up with a blank screen when accessing the the newly purchased and transfered website. I’ll attempt to share with you a very high level step by step for moving a wordpress blog. The same method I use each time I either create multiple websites based on WP or buy a WP based site. This is not necesarily the method they will tell you in the wordpress support section.
First, understand you are dealing with a DB and a set of site files. They need to be handled diffently and we’ll start with the site file.
1.) Have the old website owner .zip the contents of the site and allow you access to download this .zip file. The contents should start with the typical wp- folders then several files including wp-config.php and index.php.
2.) Next have the previous site owner export the sql data base and sen you (or provide for download) the .sql file.
3.) Upload the .zip to your sites new location and extract it there. In modern versions of cpanel you have the option to simply check the file and click extract in the file manager.
This is much better than uploading the actual individual files and folders because WP sites are VERY PARTICULAR about missing or corrupt files. There are hundreds of files in a WP install, it’s real easy to lose one in a long FTP transfer. Send up the .zip and extract it on the server.
4.) Dont go to the site’s new URL yet!!! Oh yeah, I assume you pointed the domain to your nameservers and created the addon (or if it’s the root to your host) domain there. If it’s an addon, you should have a folder under public_html like public_html/theWebsiteIBought.com/
Note: if the URL is not exactly the same as the one you bought, there is an extra step after importing the DB.
5.) Go to mySQL and extract the DB. I suggest creating an empty db and assinging a user w/ all rights. Then dump the .sql file into that db using phpMyadmin.
URL not the same? Go to line one of table wp_options and change the value there. Also, go to line about 38-40 int he same table, wp_options, and change it there also. When you are browsing via phpMy admin just watch for the URL in the content of the field.
6.) Go back to your file manager in cPanel and edit the wp_config file and replace the db_name and db_user information (dont forget password).
7.) Now you should be able to go to www.TheSiteYouJustBought.com and see it in all it’s glory, just how it was befor you decided to buy that website.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Comments
