A few months ago I decided to move 1 of my blogs to different host provider. And because it looked like a big job and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off without messing everything up, I procrastinated for a long time.
However I did get moved and today I thought I would share what I learned about how to move a WordPress blog to a new host. The information is based on my own recent experience of moving 1 of my WordPress blogs from 1 hosting account to a different 1.
Since my blog had been active for more than a year and was receiving traffic, I didn’t want any down time. Nor did I want to lose any of the blog’s articles, comments or any of the customizations I had made. Therefore the first thing I did was read a lot of information about doing a move like this. The second thing I did was call Hostgator support because I intended to move my blog to 1 of my hostgator accounts. And before I started the move I wanted to verify what I needed to do and find out what level of support I would get in the event things didn’t go well.
I must say the support staff at Hostgator has always been terrific and this time was no different. The support person quickly understood what I wanted to do, verified the steps I needed to perform and assured me that if there were any problems it would probably be in my config file and they could help me get it fixed.
Because the steps below detail what I did when moving my blog I want to give you the specifics about the move:
1. My domain names are registered and maintained by different domain registration services. It would probably make things easier if they were all at the same place.
2. My old WordPress blog was created using fantastico and hosted under a primary domain on a hosting service other than Hostgator.
3. The new location for my FriendsWhoCare.us blog is on Hostgator as a Addon domain. The primary domain for this account has a WordPress blog in the public_html directory. Having 2 WordPress blogs on the same hosting account isn’t necessary. I just thought I’d mention it so you would know it was OK to do this.
I should warn you that while the number of steps to move a WordPress blog to a new host is small, some can take several hours.
Step 1: Create backups of you your blog and database. This can be done with the backup wizard through your cPanel.
Step 2: If you have email accounts, autoreponders and/or forwarders set up where your old blog is hosted, make backups of those too. (I think I forgot to copy my sig file from my old hosted email accounts 
)
Step 3: Go into your old WordPress blog’s admistration panel and deactivate all your plugins. No one mentioned doing this in any of the stuff I read and it was the plugins that made my site unavailable for a few seconds after the move.
Step 4: Using a FTP client download all your blogs files and folders onto your PC. Be sure to keep the directory structure and don’t miss any hidden files like .htaccess files!
Step 5. Make sure you have a current backup of your blogs database with the “.sql.tgz” file extension.
Step 6. Create a new Addon domain. Hostgator provides a video in their video tutorials.
Step 7. Using FTP, upload all the files and folders for your blog to the new domain.
Step 8. Using the MySQL Databases Tool in your cPanel, create a new database for your blog. Create a user for the blog and assign all privileges to that user.
Step 9. Using the phpMyAdmin tool in your cPanel, navigate to your new database and import your backup file.
Step 10. Using the file manager in your cPanel, navigate to your blog and edit the wp_config.php file. Change the database name, database user and database user password to those you created in step 8. Save file and exit.
Step 11. Log into both your old and new hosting accounts and navigate to your blog directory on each. Working your way through the file structures, change the permissions on your new blogs files and folders to match those on the old account.
Step 12: Go to your domain register service and change the DNS location for your domain to point to the new location. It should only take a couple of hours however it’s recommended that you wait at least 24 hours before you post a new article.
Step 13: Once you know your blog is can be found at the new location go into the blog’s administration panel and reactivate your plugins 1 at a time. Every time you activate a plugin verify that your blog works correctly. If you encounter 1 that messes things up, deactivate and reinstall the plugin.
When I moved my blog I didn’t deactivate the plugins and couldn’t get into my blog administration area. To solve this problem I used the cPanel file manager interface to rename the plugins that appeared to be causing the problems. By renaminging them I was deactivating them which then allowed me to login and reinstall the plugins that were giving me problems. After the reinstall, I found the plugin’s administration was still intact and the blog worked correctly.
I hope this article helps you however you can get additional information about how to move WordPress blogs at:
* Moving WordPress
* WordPress FAQ: How do I Move my blog to a new host?
I now have 2 of my blogs on Hostgator and will be moving another 1 in a couple of weeks. And do you want to know why I’m doing all these moves?
Because at Hostgator I get reliability, support and my sites load faster. That’s right. Now when I post an article on my FriendsWhoCare blog I won’t have to go grap a cup of coffee and wait for 10 minutes. Instead I’ll click that publish button and see my new post withing a couple of seconds.
Ya just gotta love that cute little gator. He’s fast 
To Your Success,
Susan
