Best way to migrate a WordPress website to our hosting & some useful tips when you do it.

Its very normal that people want to migrate their own WordPress websites to our PBN hosting. Its just a case of keeping things private for them and peace of mind. We totally understand that not everyone wants us to migrate their PBN Websites, even when we can do it free.

So I wanted to put together a helpful guide. On the best way to move your WordPress PBN sites to our severs. There are some things you need to think about prior to moving them. The outcome of these checks will depend on which migration option is best for you.

Depending on where your PBN site is currently hosted. You may find that migration plugins are blocked. This is very often the case with some PBN hosting providers. They are so worried about their customers leaving, they make it difficult for them to do so. Pathetic, but sadly true. If your able to install migration plugins then either options laid out below. Will be available to you. If not then the XML export option is the way to beat them.

OPTION 1: Using a WordPress Plugin to migrate your website.

There are many different WordPress plugins out there that can handle a Migration. But in my personal experience, not all of them are equal. The most reliable way to migrate your WordPress website is using the All-In-One WP migrations plugin.

The free version of the plugin should be enough for most people on our platform. As we provide a file manager to upload the archive it creates and easy way to migrate. But if you want to restore from Google drive or one drive for example. Then then pro addition addon is well worth its money. Its much faster moving the archives also.

To migrate your WordPress website to our servers using the All-In-One plugin is very easy. Just follow these steps below:

1. Install the plugin on your current site.
2. Run the plugin export.
3. Download or upload to 3rd party service the backup archive.
4. Add the domain to our hosting dashboard.
5. Flip the Name Servers to those provided in our dashboard or use the temporally URL function to access your new website. (If you use the temporarily URL function, then you need to flip the name servers at the very end of this process of course)
6. Install the plugin on your new site.
7. Run the import feature
8. Enjoy you newly moved website 🙂

OPTION 2: Using WordPress XML export/import to move your site.

WordPress comes built in with a very handy XML export / Import feature. This can make it really easy to move your PBN website when you are not able to use a Plugin. The process is straight forward enough. It is very simple, although there is a slight bit more manual involvement.

Unlike when using a migration plugin. This method of migration will not move the template and plugins. It will move the core data, images, posts, pages & all outbound links will stay as they should be of course.

So to migrate your WordPress website to our hosting using the XML method: Just follow these simple steps.

1. Go in to your old website. Export the XML file – as shown in the image above.
2. Add your domain to our hosting Dashboard > Do Not update the domain Name servers at this point!
3. Access your new WP install on our servers though the Temporally URL structure.
4. Import the XML file & make sure you select to download images. This will pull all the images from your old hosting (unless they block the access, which is very rate). Import all your posts and pages.
5. Go to the WordPress settings. Check the permalink structure and general settings to ensure all is how you want it to be.
6. Install any template & plugins you want. They do not have to be the same as your old site, unless you want/need to be.
7. Update the name servers on your domain to those shown inside our Dashboard.
8. Enjoy your website on our hosting 🙂

Some Important & useful Tips when you do migrate your WP site.

• If you want to restore a website from the WayBack machine archive. Then this can be done a totally different way. You can read my post on restoring from the wayback machine here. This will help you if you are looking for this type of thing.

• For any website you migrate in, you will break our SSO (one click login from our dashboard to your WP website) function. There is a very easy fix for this. Please read my post about How to fix SSO when you migrate your website here. This will show you how to resolve & fix this issue yourself.

• If your moving your site to a different domain. You may have issues with the URLS in your new site not being properly updated. There are some cases of where this happens. You may get broken images in your site or internal links & menu items etc. There is a very easy solution to fix this as well. Simply install the Better search & replace WP plugin. There are other plugins that do the same thing. But in my personal experience, this one is the only one that works properly and without issues. It does a really good job. Just make sure you use the correct url string to search for and replace with. And ensure the ‘DRY RUN’ option is NOT selected. Its selected by default and will not make any changes. So make sure you untick it!

• Some hosting providers edit, modify and do all sorts of things with their WP files. Some will also install MU plugins. This can cause issues once the site is moved. But they are very easily fixed. First use our file manager to look inside the WP-Content folder and check in the plugins folder. If there is a folder named ‘MU Plugins’ just rename the folder and that will normally solve most issues.

Make sure you are not accessing your old site still.

Please remember when you update your Name Servers on the domain. It can take a short while for the DNS to propagate. If you have recently visited the site on your old hosting. Then you may need to clear your browser cache to see the new site. Very often I get support tickets, where people say I just migrated a website and the SSL certificate is not working. Or my website is not accessible. Its all because you have cached the old DNS or the DNS is just propagating still. Clearing the cache or just waiting a few minutes is enough in 99% of situations to pick up the new site. Which will be working just fine 🙂 one of the best ways to check this is by using a proxy server.

Two good Free proxies to check with are:

https://www.proxysite.com/

https://hide.me/en/proxy

If you see the new site working ok in the proxy. Then for sure its just browser cache or a DNS propagation issue, that will clear very quickly on its own. Remember using a VPN on your own device, doesn’t clear browser cache. So testing through one of the above free proxies, is a good way to get a clean view of your moved site.

Need some help or moved a site and its not working?

As always, please remember. If you are stuck with anything or if there is any sort of problem. Please just put in a support ticket from inside our Dashboard and we will happily assist you as needed.