I learn something new everyday! I promise you I do…. I have been battling with switching servers over the past few days. I switch to a different server with my hosting provider and I don’t know why my blog would magically just move without any issues. Boy did I have my work cut out for me. Not just my blog but all of my other sites.
They still have a maintenance sign up but, they will be up and running shortly. But, to help everyone that is trying to switch their blog from one server to another or transfer any other data… Listen up… This is what I had to do.
#1. Go ahead and back up all of your files! First and foremost.
#2. On your old server: Download your Wordpress database. Go to your cpanel and access: phpmyadmin
#3. Change your DNS server, if you haven’t already. Since you have a new server this would need to be changed for your domain name.
#4. On your new server: In Fantastico- Add Wordpress or what ever service you are using.
#5. On your new server: Go into your CPanel and access: phpmyadmin and import the file that you saved to your computer.
These steps will only move your database such as users, post on main page, and widgets. From this point I was still seeing an error page when I selected the actual link to the post and all of my images where not showing because they had not been moved. An all of the themes and plugins were not properly installed. So you have to transfer your WP-Content folder.
#6. Go and access your files through your CPanel File manager client. (It is not good to use an anonymous FTP client because it does not reveal all hidden files and files may not be writable.
Now that you have access your file, you need to compress the file and download it from your old server. Then go to your new server and upload the file content in its proper place. The extract that file.
If your WP-content is too large, you need to do a little bit at a times. Such as, compress the plugin folder, then the theme folder, and upload folder separatley.
Now, you should havae all of your personalized themes transferred.
The next step… At this point my blog looked normal but, the links still did not work properly. The images where there but I was still getting an error 404 when clicking the pages and a heading.
#7. Go to your word press folder, what ever it may be called and make sure that all of your hidden files are being viewed. After clicking on that folder, I compared the two and notice that the .htacess, .adform, and errorlog was missing from my new server.
I am sure the only one I probably needed was the .htacess, that is the most important but compress those documents and transferred them to my new server and …EVERYTHING WORKED!
YEAH!! Now, I can sleep.. I have been up for days. Now, I know =) Of course before this entire process started, I had to transfer all of the attachments and uploads from my old server to the present one.
Well, I can almost sleep now, I have about 10 more sites to go. But, at least I know what to do now!!
Thank you JESUS!!!