Building a new website should be a really enjoyable accomplishment, not a trial fraught with headaches! Especially if you’re new to the space, you’ve perfected your site in a test environment and all that’s left is moving your WordPress site to a live server. Yet, in my experience, this is where the trouble really begins – hours of file transfers using an FTP client, changing your config file to refer to the new database, trying to navigate database permissions to make sure it all connects – only to get hit with an error and absolutely no explanation of where you went wrong. Start the upload over from scratch a couple of times and soon you’ll find yourself frustrated and a week behind your go-live deadline. Before you stumble your way through only to end up grumpy, on hold to your hosting provider’s tech support, why not learn from my experience…

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

It’s a great idea to backup your files and database to a cloud service (such as Dropbox) every so often while you’re working in test. It’s common sense, but not so commonly practiced, that you should backup everything digital that’s important to you regularly (no, once a year is not ‘regularly’ enough). Not only will this protect you from technical failures or natural disasters, but it will put your mind at ease while working; if you break, lose, or delete something you will be able to recover it. Phew.

More important than general, periodic backups of your test site, is backing up the final site before you even take one step toward publishing live. It is vital that you make a copy of your sites files (literally just copy+paste the whole folder to another location for safekeeping), as well as your database. I cannot stress enough how critical backing up your database is. Export a copy of the database and save it somewhere safe (again, this is where a cloud service is useful).

USE AN FTP CLIENT TO TRANSFER FILES.

Save yourself some time and hassle, and download a free FTP client that will help automate your file transfer process. When moving your site from one server location to another (test to live, or one hosting provider to another), the first step is loading all the site files into the new locations “public_html” folder. You are welcome to struggle through the manual upload, but it’s waaaaay more convenient to fire up an FTP client and put that baby to work while you do other things. Or take a nap. My preference is Cyberduck because it’s fairly simple and intuitive to use, but other high quality options out there include FileZilla, WinFCP, and Transmit.

Get this ready to go with your FTP settings connected (there are loads of helpful instructions and how-tos out there, like this), but don’t transfer any files or folders yet.

RESPECT THE ALMIGHTY PLUGIN.

Some advice out there suggests avoiding using WordPress plugins to transfer your site as they can be rife with bugs and cause problems in the transfer. I beg to differ. There is at least one, brilliant plugin out there that makes the transfer process both speedy (literally at least 80% faster) and easy for even the most basic user. Duplicator. AFTER you’ve created your backups, downloaded an export of your database, and got your FTP Client ready, search the Plugins library for Duplicator. This application will make the process a breeze – just follow the prompts to download a .zip folder of all your site files + the installer.php file that accompanies it.

Once you have these, use your FTP Client to transfer those two files to the public_html file on your new hosting server. Depending on the size of your site, this shouldn’t take longer than an hour. Once the file transfer is complete, just type in your live sites domain (if this isn’t already connected/pointed to your new server sort that out first) as follows: www.exampledomain.com/installer.php . If your file transfer has been successful, you’ll land on a Duplicator page with a handful of criteria saying “pass” or “fail”. Follow the prompts from here, create a new database file, and your site will be live within minutes.

Take my word for it; save yourself the energy and free up your time by using these simple but highly effective services when moving your WordPress site to a new server. And remember, when in doubt – back everything up first!