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Niche Site Migration – 8 Steps To A Quick And Error-Free Transfer Process

Congratulations to you for selling your site(s)!

So you’ve sold your site, offered great post sale support with the migration and you’re thinking “Now what?”.  A solid plan, testing and having the right tools can make any migration easy.  In this post, I’ll cover the basics of site migration including DB backup and restore, file transfer, testing the new install, and finally domain transfer with any DNS changes.

The Plan

Every good migration should have plan, even for the smallest of sites.  If you go in with a basic outline of what needs to be done, you will be better prepared should go something go wrong because you can retrace your steps.  For the purposes of this post, I’m going to be using a GoDaddy to GoDaddy sites transfer of AdSenseFlippers.com which is a WordPress site.  However, you could apply these tactics to any hosting platform and even across different providers.

The basic outline goes like this:

1. Backup your database.
2. Get all site files to including the database backup.
3. Move all files to the new host.
4. Create a new DB, note the details for later, and restore from the backup SQL file.
5. Point the WordPress installation to the new DB.
6. Test the new installation to make sure everything is working properly.
7. Transfer the domain to the new account using updated nameservers.
8. Remove the domain from the old hosting account and add it to the new one, pointing it to the correct directory.

In order to make things clear I have included the following screencasts of each step.  It’s a lot easier than trying to layout in words exactly where to point and click.

Step 1: Backup Your Database

Backing up your database is pretty simple.  There many tools out there for doing this, but I have decided to go directly through GoDaddy as this provides a simple SQL files which we can use to restore to any compatible DB even at a different host.  If you are looking for regular backups of your site to be made, I suggest the plugin WordPress Backup to Dropbox.

Here’s my video walk-through of a DB backup at GoDaddy (the sound’s a little low on this one, sorry):

Tools mentioned in this video:

GoDaddy Hosting Control Center

Step 2: Get All Site Files Including The Database Backup

This is the next step in moving all your files to your local machine in preparation for moving them to the new host.  There are a number of ways to do this, but I have decided to show the manual way to ensure you understand the process fully.  If you have SSH access, you could zip the files and then simply transfer the smaller zip file.  However, this requires some technical know-how as well as being familiar with a UNIX command  line.

Here’s my video of 2nd step in the migration process:

Tools mentioned in this video:

FileZilla

Step 3: Move all files to the new host

Once you have all the files on your local system, you are ready to move everything over to the new host.  This is essentially the opposite of Step 2, but I have provided a video for the sake of completion.  again, you could use SSH access and a zip file to do things faster, but it is a bit more complicated.

Here’s my video on transferring file to the new host:

Step 4: Create A New DB And Restore From The Backup SQL File

In this step I will lead you through creating the new DB via the GoDaddy interface and restoring from the backup SQL file.  It’s also import to note the DB details, like name, host, user, and password.  We will need these details later when connecting WordPress to our database.

Please note that database creation varies greatly from one host to another.  Still, the fundamentals should be the same.  If you are with a provider other than GoDaddy, contact tech support directly for a walk-though on how to setup a new DB and restore from an SQL file.

Here’s the video on Step 4:

Step 5: Point The WordPress Installation To The New DB

Now we have to tell our new installation of WordPress where the new database is and what the credentials are.  This requires editing the wp-config.php file (easier than it seems) and replacing it with the one on the server.  My video shows only the editing of the file, but I think you can figure out how to replace the edited wp-config.php file with the one on the server.  Note that you could do this step before moving everything over to the new host.

Here’s the video:

Tools mentioned in this video:

Notepad++

Step 6: Test The New Installation

Testing the new installation can be done in one of 3 ways:

1. If you have a primary domain on the new hosting system, go to primarydomain.com/subfolder where subfolder is the location you put the files in step 3.  This will lead to some broken links and an ugly site, but will at lest tell you if the DB is connected correctly and WordPress is installed properly
2. Another way to use your primary domain is by creating a subdomain, as in test.primarydomain.com.  Then point that subdomain to the directory from step 2 and you site will look pretty good.  Links will still refer to the live site and some images may not work.
3. The best way to test a migrated installation is by tricking your local computer into thinking the site is already on the new server.  We can do this by editing the hosts file and pointing the domain to the new IP.  Unfortunately, this won’t work in GoDaddy’s shared hosting environment as you cannot add the same domain to two separate hosting accounts (even if you own both of them).  However, this is a great way to test if you are coming from a different provider and your site will be completely operational in this mode as if it were already moved.

Here’s a brief video on the 3 ways to test a migration:

Tools mentioned in this video:

Hosts file

Step 7: Transfer The Domain To The New Account

Note: It’s debatable whether step 7 or step 8 should be done first. We decided to present step 7 first as testing should ensure there are no problems with this install.  However, to be 100% certain, you may want to point the domain to the name servers of the the new account and then do step 8.  If everything works, come back to step 7 and complete the transfer.

Transferring a domain is pretty common these days and companies like GoDaddy have made it relatively easy to move domains from one account to another.  One word of caution, if you are moving the domain to an account out of your control be sure you have money in hand and everything is working because once you authorize the transfer, there is no getting it back.

Two things that I think may be a little unclear in this video:

1. The receiving GoDaddy account will receive an email once the account change is initated.  They will need to follow these directions to complete the transfer.
2. When moving from one registrar to another, you will need to pay the new registrar an incoming transfer fee.  In most cases the new registrar will also include a free year of registration in the transfer fee, plus whatever time was left from the existing registration.

Here’s my video overview of step 7, the domain transfer process:

Tools mentioned in this video:

Purchase a GoDaddy Domain Transfer

Transferring a domain to GoDaddy from another registrar

Transferring domains from GoDaddy to another registrar

Moving a domain from one GoDaddy account to another

Step 8: Remove The Domain From The Old Hosting Account And Add It To The New One

Whew, we’re almost done!  The last step in the migration process involves removing the domain from the old host and adding it to the new host.  If you are moving from GoDaddy to another provider you can skip the removal process, it’s only necessary because GoDaddy has a single domain policy across their entire shared hosting environment.

After completing this step and verifying the new live site is working, you might want to take some time to cleanup you old server by deleting the old files and DB.  If you deal with lots of sites, leaving to many files or DBs around can really slow things down.  Just be sure to have a local backup in case things go wrong.

Here my walk through on step 8:

Tools mentioned in this video:

GoDaddy AccountExec overview

If you liked this post and would like to see more like it, please promote it socially below!  Do you have any suggestions for a smooth migration?  Any questions that you would like answered?  Perhaps you have found a tool that makes things easier.  Please share!