2 min read
Moving a WordPress site sounds scary. Your site is your business, and the horror stories about broken databases, days of downtime, and lost email are real enough. But a migration done in the right order keeps your site answering the whole way through. Here's the entire process.
Copy first, switch later
Every safe migration follows the same principle: build a complete, working copy of your site on the new host while your old site keeps running. Only when the copy is verified do you point your domain at it. Visitors never see a gap.
Step 1: Back everything up
You need three things: your files (the wp-content folder matters most), your database (a
.sql export from phpMyAdmin or a plugin like WPvivid), and a note of your email accounts if
your host provides mailboxes.
Step 2: Restore on the new host
Upload the files, import the database, and update wp-config.php with the new database
credentials. Most control panels make this a guided process.
Step 3: Test before you switch
This is the step people skip, and skipping it is behind many failed migrations. Use your new host's staging URL, or edit your computer's hosts file to preview the domain against the new server. Click through your pages, log into wp-admin, submit a form, place a test order.
Step 4: Lower your DNS TTL, then switch
A few hours before switching, lower your domain's TTL to 300 seconds so the change propagates fast. Then update your DNS to the new server. Keep the old hosting active for a few days as a safety net.
This is the one window where "no downtime" needs a caveat. While the change propagates, both servers answer, so anything written during that period can land on the old site and be left behind: an order, a comment, a form submission, an edited post. Nobody sees an outage, but the data can still end up in the wrong place. On a brochure site that does not matter. On a shop it does, so switch when the site is quiet and check the old server for stray orders before you cancel it.
Step 5: Verify email and SSL
Confirm your SSL certificate is issued on the new host and your email flows. Only then should you cancel the old plan.
Or: let your new host do all of this
Any host that specializes in WordPress should offer to do this entire process for you. At Red
Water, migration is free on every plan: our engineers do the copy, the testing,
and the switch, and you approve the result before anything changes. If you'd rather never think
about wp-config.php, that's exactly what we're for.
Leaving a particular host? The GoDaddy, Hostinger and Bluehost checklists cover what to untangle there before any of the steps above.