Information on How To Transfer a WP Blog ...

[AnniePot]

Hi
Over the course of time I've created a couple of WP (self hosted) blogs that I'm no longer interested in developing further. I would like to advertise them for sale, but first I would need to know how to transfer them to the purchaser's web hosting, should they sell.

I've searched for directions but found no detailed help.

Could someone either itemize the process step by step or tell me where I could find that information.

Thanks

[RichPargeter]

This will probably help

codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

[Terry Loving]

Thanks for the question and thanks for the link. I was just getting to this for myself as well.

[VegasGreg]

Here is an email that I send buyers of my sites that go over the details. There are several ways to accomplish a transfer, but this seems to work the best for me.

TRANSFER INSTRUCTIONS



Here is a detailed list of how to install the site on your own server. I will keep a backup on my server until you have completed the entire process.

1)Domain name – Once I transfer the domain name to your Godaddy account, you will need to login to your Godday account and accept the transfer. Once that is final, you will need to pull up 'My Domains' and select the relevant domain name.

From there You will need to click the DNS (Set Name Servers) to edit. There you will enter your own hosting Domain Name Servers based on your webhost settings. The settings for the domain will originally have my 2 DNS settings: NS1.---------.COM and NS2.----------.COM. You will just need to replace those 2 settings with your 2 webhost settings and save/update the change.

It will sometimes take 2-3 hours (or more) for that upate to take place, but typically 20-30 minutes. You can pull up the site and keep refreshing the page every so often to see when the change has taken affect. The site will dissappear when it is on your servers and you should get a "Page Not Found" type page.

2)Now go into your webhost account and add-on(or create) your domain name.

3)In your webhost Admin Panel (cPanel) click on the Fantastico De Luxe button.

Click Wordpress in the left column. Click install new version on this domain name and proceed to install Wordpress. When finished, remember the MySql database name given, if you have other Wordpress files installed on your host.

4)Next, go back to the webhost cPanel an click on the 'File Manager' button. Pull up this domain and look for the files already on the site. You will see a few folders at the top called wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes.

These are Wordpress folders. Upload the zipped folders included in my email entitled 'images' and 'wp-content' to the server. Then select the zipped 'images' folder and click the 'extract' button. Then select the zipped 'wp-content' folder and extract that. It should over-write the needed files in the wp-content folder already there. If it askes if you want to overwrite the files, say yes.


5)Now, go back to the cPanel home page and click the phpMyAdmin button. If your cPanel doesn't have a phpMyAdmin button, click on the Mysql Databases button and go to the very bottom of that page and there should be a small link that says phpMyAdmin. Once there, on the left menu colum you should see the
Wordpress databse listed (named from the WP install above). It may look something like sitename_wrdp1.

Click on it. When that page loads, you will see some tabs across the top of the page. Click on the "Import" tab. Click the "Browse" button and search your computer for the file 'wrdp1.sql.gz' which was in the email package I sent to you. Then click the "GO" button.

6)Everything should now be installed. If you go back to the domain name you should see the site back in action. Sometimes you will see a Wordpress message the first time asking you to update/migrate the database. If you get that message, just click the yes/ok button and let it do it's thing.

The site should now appear as normal on your own server.

7)You will need to log into your Wordpress Admin area and make a few updates to make sure all the links on the site work properly. Your access codes will be in the 'Site Instructions' file that I emailed to you.

You will need to click:

==>>Settings ==>>Permalinks and then just click the 'Save Changes' button. (That will resore the permalinks structure used on the site).

Then go to ==>>Settings ==>>XML-Sitemap and about 6 lines down you will see a link 'rebuild the sitemap' manually. Click it and that will restore the site map.

8)Read the Site Instructions provided to learn how to update the ad codes on the site to your own ads and affiliate links and to add additional posts and images if needed.

Sounds complicated, but is pretty simple all in all.

[paulie888]

Annie,

I'd also recommend keeping a permanent back up on your computer, just in case. Things can go wrong and servers can crash, and if this is something that you've kept and worked on for months then you definitely want it backed up locally.

Paul

[AnniePot]

Thanks everyone - greatly appreciated. Yes, I already have backups downloaded automatically to me every week on all my blogs via a WP plugin.

[mywebwork]

Originally Posted by VegasGreg

Here is an email that I send buyers of my sites that go over the details.

Hey Greg, that's a really nicely formatted set of instructions, thanks!

Annie, it would be hard to add anything to improve upon Greg's instructions, but while I was reading them the thought occurred that you could also go through the steps yourself and use Camtasia (or Cam Studio etc) and make a quick "how-to" video of the process. This would accomplish at least 2 things - (1) you would be familiar with the process yourself in case your buyer required assistance and (2) you would have a unique selling point for your blogs.

Best of luck...

Bill

[avandrunen]

This is awesome information, I was just looking for this as I have a site I was thinking of putting up but concerned about the transfer process.

Thanks Annie for asking and Greg for a great response.

[admiral]

thanks for the link rich could sort out a problem for many.