Over the past few months, we’ve become a huge fan of using WordPress to create and maintain various websites. When we were testing the sites, we created them on our main domain but then needed to transfer them to independent domains. Below are the steps we followed to ensure a successful transfer.
WordPress Domain Transfer Checklist:
- Create new domain name
- Create new WordPress installation
- Login to new WordPress installation
- Upgrade the WordPress installation to the same version as the original site
Upgrade Automatically (if possible) - Backup Database SQL on Original Site
May already be done automatically by WordPress (check your wp-content/backup-db folder) - Download original WordPress site files (include all folders and files)
- Login to your original hosting company’s Control Panel
- Browse to your MYSQL Database and write down the original database name, username, and password
May also be retrieved from your original wp-config.php file - Login to your new hosting company’s Control Panel
- Browse to your MYSQL Database
- Click on PHPMyAdmin
- Click on SQL Tab on top (without clicking any of the tables on the side)
- Upload the backup SQL file
- Change the Site URL to the new site in the various parts of the database (Site won’t work without this)
A superb resource: http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL - Upload your WordPress Site files (include all folders and files) to the new domain
- Update your database name, username, and password in the new wp-config.php file
- Test your new site