Transferring a WordPress site

you can use a wp cloner :-) i had one of my employees do this and it only took an hour or so... and it was a big site.

Here is how it goes:

1. back up your old site (files and database)
2. Create new wordpress installation on new site
3. Upload files to new site
4. import database to new site

What is a WP cloner? Is that software or something?

Basically, yes.

If it will be on the same domain - there is nothing more to do.

If it is moved to a different domain, then after importing the DB, go to the wp_options table and find the "home" and "site_url" rows > click on the pencil for editing and type in the new URL with http AND no slash at the end.

Depending on how much content you have on/in it, you may have to edit the URLs of the uploaded images in posts... normally they go to a folder like
...wp-content/uploads/...
however, in the post itself you will find full, absolute path, i.e.
example.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/imagefile.jpg

There is a plugin, called Search and Replace and you can set it to search your posts' content and replace the string "example.com" with "new-domain.com".

EDIT. Reading Blaine's post I realized I didn't mention the editing of the wp-config (in case the database has different name and user and pw) - but those steps (for me) are evident...

WP Cloner is a plugin. If you move only one site - it's not really worth investing in it.

If you need to do it constantly, you may consider buying it.

For smaller sites, I've just used WPTwin which works pretty well.

It didn't play nicely with my original wordpress site, though, so here's what I did for that:

1. Used Fantastico to install a blank wordpress onto my server for me.

2. Wipe out all the tables in the database it created through phpMyAdmin, export my original database from old webhost, import to new database, and in CPanel set it up so that I can remotely connect to the new database from the old website.

3. Updated the database settings in wp-config on the old website to use the new website's database (this way any comments that come in during this process go to the new site automatically.)

4. Copied all of my wp-content folders and files along with some other files and folders (this site has been around 6 years and isn't really a "standard" install...most people can get away with just moving their wp-content folders and potentially their wp-config if they've modified it) to the new host.

5. Test the new site (on a Windows box, edit your hosts file to point your domain to the new IP address, lets you test everything locally without affecting your users.) Determine everything works and looks right.

6. Change DNS. Wait. You are pretty much done, although it might take a few hours to (potentially) a few days for everybody to see the new host. If you leave the old host up, though, and it's pointing to the new database, it's no big deal.

7. Once a few days have passed and/or you know nobody is hitting the old webserver anymore, you can remove remote access to your database in the CPanel of hte old account and delete or let expire your old hosting account.

If you don't want to deal with waiting a few days to move over, switch DNS over to CloudFlare (awesome freemium service!) which lets you just go in and change the IP address whenever you are ready and it only takes about 5 minutes for everything to be updated since your DNS settings don't need to propagate around the internet...you are still pointing to CloudFlare. (It will also speed up your site, provide access to your site if it goes offline, save you a lot of bandwidth, and stop spam and hackers from being able to bother you.)

But, as I said above, using something like WPTwin is easier and knocks half the items above off of your to do list.

Hope that's helpful.

Do what hpgoodboy said. I just did that and it was easy and took five minutes.

He said

"Here is how it goes:

1. back up your old site (files and database)
2. Create new wordpress installation on new site
3. Upload files to new site
4. import database to new site"

Yes, it's pretty much as simple as that. You do have to create the database and user and edit the wp-config.php if the database information is different. Instructions are here.

http://domainingdiva.com/transfer.pdf

You can use wptransfers.com