Migrating your WordPress website to a different host and domain

There are many reasons why you may wish to find a new home for your website. In this video tutorial, we will take a closer look at how we can use a migration plugin to migrate our site to a new host and domain.

Learning outcomes

1. Installing the All-in-One plugin on your old and new websites.
2. Exporting and importing your website as a file.
3. Identifying how to set up 301 redirects.

Comprehension questions

1. Why is it important to make a backup of your site before migrating?
2. What are 301 redirects?

Transcript

Hi, and welcome to Learn WordPress. Today we will take a quick look at how you can migrate your site to a new host and domain. Why would someone want to migrate their site? Well, some of the reasons might be due to moving to a new host, changing your domain name or moving from HTTP to HTTPS. This tutorial is right for you if you want to move WordPress hosts as well as change your domain name.

All you will need to do is set up a new site and install a migration plugin on both your old and new websites. And also, remember to make a backup of your site on a device before starting the migration. There are various migration plugins available in the plugins directory. Plugins such as Duplicator, Backup Migration and All-in-One WordPress Migration are just some of the plugins worth exploring. Some hosts even have their own migration plugins if you plan to move your site to them.

Today I’m going to use the All-in-One WordPress migration plugin. So once you have set up your new domain with your new host, let’s make our way to the front end of our old website, which we are of course going to transfer to a new home.

Our first step is to make our way to the dashboard, head to plugins and add the All-in-One migration plugin. Once it is installed and activated, we’ll make our way to the plugin in the left sidebar and then click on Export to and then select File. It is also advised to export it to an external drive to ensure you have a backup. When you click on File, it will start preparing the export. And once completed, we can click on download and download the file to our computer.

The next step is to make our way to a new domain and install the plugin there as well. We need the plugin on the old website and the new one as we are exporting and importing from one to the other. And once the plugin has been installed and activated, we can hover over the plugin in the left sidebar and click on import. And now, we will import or upload the file from our computer. Please take note this might take a few minutes. Once the process has been completed, we can click on Proceed as we have not added any other content to the new site, and lastly, Finish. If we make our way to the front end of our new domain, we will see that the entire site has been transferred or migrated.

Before we end, there is one last consideration. If you were concerned about SEO, it is advised to set up 301 redirects. A 301 redirect indicates to search engines that a page has been moved permanently. It basically means that if users request an old URL, they will automatically be sent to a new URL.

There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest way is to use a plugin such as Redirection, Simple 301 Redirects, or All-in-One SEO to ensure you don’t lose your website search engine rankings, traffic and conversions. You can search the plugins directory to find the right plugin for you. I did want to mention some plugins may offer additional and faster ways to set up redirects through paid features. But it is also possible to change the redirects one by one using many free versions of plugins.

All the best migrating your site to a new domain, and visit Learn WordPress for more tutorials and training material.