Manually Transfer WordPress from One Site to Another: Part 2

by | Nov 14, 2021 | WordPress

Transfer WordPress Featured Image

This is part 2 of manually transferring your wordpress from one place to another.  

 1) Login to cPanel on new WP site

2) If not already done, setup new domain or subdomain to host the transferred database

3) Install WordPress

a. You can use your host wordpress installation method, such as softalicious

b. Alternatively, you can manually install wordpress.

i. Create database for WordPress installation

Create Database

 

ii. Document DBName, DBUsername, and Password

iii. Download current version of WordPress from wordpress.org

iv. Unzip the download and upload it via FTP program such as FileZilla

v. Go to URL of your wordpress site and run the 5 minute wordpress installer

4) Import database from old DB into new DB

a. In phpMyAdmin, Go to new wordpress database and drop all the existing tables

Drop Tables

b. Confirm ‘Yes’ to drop all the tables.

If you are not 100% sure you are dropping the tables from the correct new fresh WordPress installation, select ‘No’ and go back and verify this is your new installation. One good clue is the new installation will have a small number of tables – WordPress 5.x is 12 tables.

Confirm Tables To Drop

Import the .sql file you backed-up and downloaded from your current WordPress installation

Import SQL

5) Reconfigure settings

a. Go to wp_options table

b. change the URL for siteurl

c. Change the URL for home.

Update URLs

 6) Replace content wp-content folder with the backup version

a. Open File Manager

b. Delete or rename the wp-content folder on the destination WordPress

Remove Existing Wp-content

c. Upload the wp-content.zip compressed file you created on the source WordPress

Upload Wp-content
Select Wp-content

d. Verify the upload completed

Verify Upload Success

e. Go back to file manager

f.  Right-click wp-content.zip

Right-Click to Extract Wp-content

g. Extract the files

Extract Wp-content

h. Delete the no-longer-needed wp-content.zip file

Delete Wp-content.zip

 7) Update the table prefix in your destination wp-config.php file to match what is in your source wp-config.php file
a. Open the source wp-config.php file in a text editor
b. Scroll down until you find the setting $table_prefix
c. Copy the prefix

Get Table Prefix

d. Open the destination wp-config.php file in a text editor.

e. Change the table prefix to match the table prefix from your source wp-config.php file.

f. Save your changes

Note: You can use the “Edit” function built into file manager, or else download it, open in your text editor of choice, make the edits, then reupload

Edit Wpcfg

Your new site is up and running.

If you see anything weird happening such as being able to go to wp-admin on the new host, but going to the homepage redirects you to the old site, you may be dealing with cookie issues.

You can reset all cookies for everyone by creating new salt keys.  WordPress provides a service for them.

1) Go to this link:  https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

2) Copy the results

3) Use instructions above to edit your wp-config.php file

4) Replace the existing salt keys with the new ones