Migrate WordPress Site Perfectly: The Definitive Guide

There are many reasons to migrate WordPress site from one web host to another. Whatever it is, it is never an easy decision. WordPress migration always has risks.

You don’t want downtime. You don’t want to lose your data. And you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the technical stuff.

A WordPress migration checklist is a good starting point. It helps. 

For a step-by-step guide on how to migrate a WordPress site? Read on.

TL;DR: Migrate your site with zero downtime using Migrate Guru. Quick, flawless, zero downtime, and free, Migrate Guru works with 5000+ web hosts.

What is WordPress migration?

WordPress migration is the process of moving a WordPress site from one place to another. 

But there isn’t just one definition. It can mean a few things:

It can also mean a mix of these things. You can move your site to a new host and want to change over to a new domain as well.

🔥  Successful WordPress migration is to have a functional site at the end of the process. The site should work, the links should work, and all the media should work. With zero downtime.

Step 0: Before you migrate your WordPress site

The best way to migrate WordPress site is to be prepared. 

You do not want to stop in the middle of a process to hunt for FTP credentials, or realise too late that you forgot to buy a domain. 

If it worked for the Brownies, it works for us: Be. Prepared. 

• Take a full site backup. Always take a backup of your site. Doesn’t matter if you do a manual migration or use a plugin. This is your insurance policy and safety net.
• Disable any caching, firewall, or redirect plugins. Also check the WordPress .htaccess file. There may be IP blacklists, whitelists, or redirects in there. 
• Set up maintenance mode. This will lock out users, so they cannot make changes to your site during migration. Use a maintenance mode plugin, like WP Maintenance Mode, to set this up. 
• Figure out which folder contains your website files. This is your site’s root directory. It is generally the directory at the very top of your site structure.
• Choose a web host and pick a plan. We are assuming you’ve already got a web host lined up. If not, pick one that guarantees good performance. A web host should be reliable, meaning your site stays up and loads quickly. Check if they have good customer support and a reasonable price.
• Buy a domain (optional). If you are changing the domain, then you’ll need a new one. Either your new web host plan will have a domain bundled in, or you have to get one from a registrar. 

💁‍♂️ Your old web hosting provider may have included the domain with the hosting. Before cancelling the plan, check how that works. Can you separate the two? Do you have to transfer the domain? Do you have to buy an entirely new domain?

Step 1: Getting ready for WordPress migration

You have chosen the destination host. You’ve got a domain ready. And you’re ready to migrate your site. 

Well, not quite. That’s the project plan in plan. Now we need to execute the plan.

💡 Ensure a successful move of a WordPress site to a new host with a comprehensive migration checklist.

Gather all the data you will need

Set up the destination host

💡 Even if you need to use an older PHP version initially, do that. You can always upgrade the site’s PHP version later on.

Step 2: Migrate WordPress site

There are many ways to migrate WordPress site:

1. Use a migration plugin
2. Use the web host’s service
3. Migrate your site manually

Each method has its own pros and cons, although after going through the manual migration to write this article, we have doubts about the pros of that method. 

We strongly recommend using a dedicated migration plugin; specifically Migrate Guru. It is the only one guaranteed to work every time. 

We should know. We built it.

Option 1: Migrate WordPress site for free with a plugin

There are many WordPress migration plugins you can choose from. After a lot of testing, we have discovered many are very unreliable—the only exception is Migrate Guru.

Migrate Guru guarantees flawless site migration with zero downtime. It supports over 5,000 web hosts out of the box, and actually powers the migration features of many of the top ones.

1. First, install and activate Migrate Guru from the Plugins section of your website. You need to install it on both the source and the destination sites.

2. Next, enter your email address to create an account, and click on Migrate Site.

3. From the dashboard, select your destination host. If you can’t find an icon for your web host, choose either cPanel or FTP to continue.

4. Enter all the relevant details, and click Migrate. Check the additional customisation options in case those apply to your site.

If you want to skip all of these details, grab the migration key from the destination site.

And that’s it! You’ll get a confirmation email once the migration is complete.

Once your site has migrated, skip over to the post-migration checklist below to tie up all loose ends.

Why we recommend Migrate Guru

It may seem biased, but we’ve tested many of the migration plugins out there. 

We recommend Migrate Guru because it:

💡 You can also try out WordPress backup plugins. Most will have a site migration option. BlogVault does too. Try the migration, and stay for bulletproof backups, staging, and update features.

Option 2: Migrate from the web host panel

Major WordPress web hosts will have free migration services. If you cannot find the service on your dashboard, write to their support.

Bluehost

1. To migrate WordPress site to Bluehost, create a Bluehost account and log in. Navigate to My Sites from the navigation menu, and click on Add site. 

2. Next, click on Migrate Existing Site. 

3. You will be taken to Bluehost’s Migration services panel. Agree to the terms of services, and click on Get Started Now to proceed. 

4. Enter the URL of your WordPress site, and click on Check. This step performs a compatibility check to ensure that the migration process goes smoothly. 

5. Next, you will need to install the Bluehost Site Migrator plugin on your site, and activate it. 

6. The plugin will check for compatibility again, before starting migration.

7. Click on Start Transfer to begin. 

The plugin will commence the transfer process. Once it is done, you can proceed to the post-migration checklist. 

⚠️ As indicated on Bluehost’s site, you cannot use this service to transfer a domain name to Bluehost. That is an entirely separate process. 

DreamHost

1. To migrate WordPress site to DreamHost, log into your DreamHost account, and navigate to Websites > Manage Websites. 

2. Click on + Add Website to proceed. 

3. Start setting up your website. First, you need to select a domain, or leave that for a later step. If you choose to leave it for later, you can enter a temporary name in the next screen. 

4. Next, you need to choose hosting. 

5. Finally, you will need to install WordPress. Once this step is complete, you have a blank WordPress site set up. Next, click on Set Up Website to proceed. 

6. Once WordPress is installed, you’ll be taken back to the Manage Websites dashboard. There, locate the site you just created, and click on Manage. 

7. Scroll down to the Migrating this site to DreamHost? section and click on Get Key. Copy the key.

8. Next, you need to log back into your wp-admin. Install and activate the DreamHost Automated Migration plugin.  

9. Enter your email address, and click on Migrate. 

10. Enter the key from your DreamHost dashboard, and click on Migrate.

Kinsta

1. To Migrate WordPress site to Kinsta, create and log into a Kinsta account. From the navigation menu, select Migrations.

2. Depending on how much help you need, you can choose a premium migration or a basic one, which is free. Since our test site is currently hosted on an eligible web host, we chose Request Basic migration. 

3. Read all the instructions, and follow onscreen instructions to reach the request form. Click to Finish to complete the process. 

Kinsta migrations are done manually, hence the lengthy request form.

Flywheel

1. To migrate a WordPress website to Flywheel, log into your hosting account. Scroll down to the Migrate sites for free, and click on Begin a migration. 

2. Click on I got this from the Self migrate section. 

3. Follow the instructions, and Get the plugin. Install and activate Flywheel Migrations on your site. 

4. Enter your email address and click on Get Started. 

5. Fill out your site details, and click on Migrate. 

💡 Most other web hosts will have similar processes for migrating sites. In a few cases above, you will have seen that BlogVault powers the web host’s migration plugin. It is like using a different flavour of Migrate Guru.

Option 3: Migrate WordPress site without a plugin

Manual WordPress site migration is not for the faint of heart. WordPress plugins make migration easier, yet we encountered several errors. Trust us when we say that manual migration is far, far worse.

If you must migrate WordPress site manually, please take a WordPress backup first. 

We lost count of the test sites that broke because of failed migrations. At least on our part, that was an intentional decision to feel the pain of a failed migration.

🚨 Final warning before we launch into the steps: manual migrations often fail for large sites. Connections time out, files get corrupted, and database tables get messed up. Manually migrated sites end up with critical errors. 

a. Download a copy of your website files and folders

The first step is to download a zipped copy of your WordPress files and folders. You can do this via FTP or via File Manager on cPanel, if your host has it. Find the root directory of your site, which is often public_html, and download the whole thing.

If you are using FTP, please note that this process will take a long time to complete. For our small test site of less than 100 MB, the download took over an hour to complete. This is because FTP transfer is very slow.

b. Export a copy of the database

Next, get a copy of the site database. You can use phpMyAdmin to do this, or whichever tool your host has available. In our case, the host used Adminer to manage the database. 

If you have more than one database, make sure to select the correct one. If you are unsure which database is the correct one, check the wp-config.php file for that information. 

Stick to the SQL format, as most WordPress databases use it.

c. Upload files backup to the new server

On the new host, upload the zip file containing website files to the server. 

Extract the folder.

Since WordPress is already preinstalled, it needs to be overwritten. The simplest thing to do is rename the existing root directory to something else. Then, change the uploaded directory to the root name.

d. Setup site database

Now that the WordPress files and folders are in place, the database is next up. You might have to create a new MySQL user to set up a database. This is necessary in case you are setting up WordPress installation from scratch. 

If you have WordPress pre-installed, then a database user will likely exist already. Either way, note down the database user credentials. 

Next, drop the pre-installed database tables, if any. 

Finally, import the SQL file to the database.

e. Connect the site and database 

All the pieces are now in place, so we’ve got to connect them together. We need to configure the database in the wp-config.php file.

Open the wp-config.php file.

Change the following values to new ones: DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST. 

You may need to change table_prefix from wp_. This applies if you had changed the table prefix on your old site.  

If you are replacing a web host installation, you can use their wp-config.php as a template as well. 

Option 4: Migrate a site using SSH or WP-CLI

In the previous section, we covered how to migrate WordPress site manually. However, that was via pleasant user interfaces, and it was still a painful process. In this section, we take the pain up a couple of notches, and show you how to migrate your site manually via SSH.

a. Download a copy of your site

To use SSH to migrate your WordPress site, you will need to use the command line. You may need an SSH client to do this, or use one that comes with your machine. We are using Terminal with macOS for this article. 

You will need 3 things to log into your server using SSH: server address, username, and password. You can get these from your hosting panel. Create a folder on your local machine, where you want to store the site copy. 

On the terminal, type a command in the following format: 

scp -r username@serveraddress:rootfolder localfolder

Both in the case of the ‘rootfolder’ and ‘localfolder’, make sure to enter the entire paths to both, including slashes. Once the command executes, you will be prompted to enter your password. Enter that, and execute again. This will copy your entire root directory to the local folder you have specified.

b. Download a copy of your site database

To download your WordPress database via SSH rather than using phpMyAdmin or a plugin, you need to install WP-CLI. 

Note: When we tested this method, we realised that our machine didn’t have PHP installed, which is necessary to run WP-CLI commands. So we went through a rabbit hole to install command-line tools for our machine, to install a package manager called Homebrew, to then install PHP, to finally be able to install WP-CLI, and then finally export a copy of our site database. If any of this sounds disturbingly unfamiliar, we have linked helpful articles for each step. 

Once you’ve completed all of these steps, it is finally time to download the database. Log into your server through SSH, and navigate to the folder that has the wp-config.php file, generally public_html. Then, execute the following command: 

wp db export filename.sql

Replace ‘filename’ with an appropriate name for the database download file. The file will save to the same folder. Exit the server, and then download the database file to your local machine: 

scp username@serveraddress:rootfolder/filename.sql localfolder

This will save the database backup to your local folder. 

c. Upload files to the new server

Essentially, we will now be performing the reverse of step 1. But before moving your file backup to the new server, make sure to zip the folder on your location machine. It will make the transfer process easier and faster. 

Execute the following command: 

scp zipfile.zip username@serveraddress:rootfolder

In this case, the ‘username’, ‘serveraddress’, and ‘rootfolder’ values are for your destination server. Once you execute this command, you will be asked to input the password to your new server. After you’ve entered your password, your zipped file will start uploading to your destination server. 

Next, you will need to unzip the file you’ve just uploaded. Log into the server, and navigate to the folder where the file is stored. Then execute the following command: 

unzip zipfile.zip 

Once the file is unzipped, the contents will be stored in a folder of the same name. These files need to be in the root directory of your site, not in this subdirectory. So now you need to move them up. Go into the newly unzipped directory, and then run the following command: 

mv * ../

This will move all the contents of the current directory into the root directory, and takes care of the migration of your WordPress files.

d. Upload database to your new server 

The next step is to migrate your database to your new server. The command is very similar to the one you used to upload the zip file: 

scp filename.sql username@serveraddress:rootfolder

This has uploaded your database backup to your server. The next step is to install it. Log into your server, and navigate to the root directory. Execute the following command: 

mysql -u username -p databasename < filename.sql

‘username’ and ‘databasename’ in this instance are the credentials for the freshly installed database on the new server. This command will replace the database with the contents of the SQL file specified.

Step 3: Configure your new domain [optional]

Sometimes a domain migration takes place at the same time as a host change; other times it doesn’t. The most common occasion to change both is when making a site live, after building it elsewhere first. 

If you didn’t change the domain, you can skip this section.

a. Change links to reflect new ones 

You need to do a search and replace of all the links on the site to replace the old domain with the new one. 

This is a very important step. Otherwise you will end up with broken images, broken links, and even messed up redirects. 

Doing this manually is difficult. Use a plugin like Better Search and Replace. We used the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin. 

Change the values for WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to point to your new domain. 

Once installed, navigate to the Tools menu, and click on Update URLs. 

Enter the new URL in the Step 1 field, and check all the appropriate boxes in Step 2. 

Click on Update URLs NOW to continue.

If you’re comfortable with the command line, use the WP-CLI command: search-replace. This avoids installing a plugin.

b. Configure the new domain 

To make sure the right domain points to the site from the database, you need to change two values.

Go into Settings on the left sidebar, and then into General. 

Change the values for WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to point to your new domain. 

You can also do this from the database. Look for the wp_options table, and then siteurl and home. Right-click on each option value, and replace the old URL with the new one.

Step 4: Change the DNS records

Since your site has moved to another server, you now have to point your domain to that new server. This step also applies if you are changing the domain name of your WordPress site.

a. Get DNS details from your web hosting provider

You need the DNS records from your web host. DNS, or domain name servers, help map the domain name to the correct server. All web hosts will have DNS information readily available. Copy the information from the site server.

b. Update DNS details with domain registrar

A domain registrar is where you bought your domain name from. They also map your domain name to the hosting server using DNS records. 

You need to update the DNS records for your domain to point to your site server. Each registrar will have their own instructions in their documentation. The update may take a few hours up to a day to reflect. So don’t be alarmed if typing in the URL doesn’t immediately load your site.   

Note: Many web hosts offer free domains along with their hosting packages. If this is the case with you and you are migrating to a new host, you may have to check how this affects your domain. You can look for standalone domain services with the old host, or port to another registrar. 

Step 5: After transferring your WordPress site

Congratulations, your WordPress migration has worked and your site is in its new home! You’re now in the home stretch.  

Several things can and will change on your site post-migration. It is always better to have a final check to make sure everything is working as it should. 

Once you are through with the post-migration checklist, you can now focus on running your new site. Many of the things we have included in the post-migration checklist are automatically taken care of by Migrate Guru. It really is that efficient and effective.

Extra things to consider with WooCommerce sites

The important thing to remember with a WooCommerce site is that data tends to be dynamic on the site. That means users, products, orders, and subscriptions can change on a minute-to-minute basis. So migrating a WooCommerce site differs from migrating an ordinary WordPress site.

The best thing to do with a WooCommerce site is to put it into maintenance mode first. This prevents changes to the store. Then use Migrate Guru to move the site to its new server.

Extra things to consider with multisites

Multisite migration is complex. The complexity increases when the domain name changes, as the database contains references.

There are additional places to edit in the multisite database:  

• wp_blogs entries to change folder name
• wp_posts tables
• wp_site
• home, siteurl, fileupload_url fields in wp_options

If moving from subdomains to subfolders or vice versa, remember to adjust:

• The .htaccess file
• The value for SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL in your wp-config.php file

Note: Some hosts don’t allow multisite installations by default. Please check with the destination web host about restrictions they may have in place.

WordPress migration and SEO performance

Migrating a site can lead to some complications that can negatively affect the SEO performance of your website. Some of the major ones are as follows:

Broken links (Error 404)

Broken links are pretty common after a site migration. Search engines don’t like these since they’re devoid of content. Use a crawling tool to audit your site for any broken links, so you can fix them. 

Server errors

Server errors like no responses or any 5XX errors mean Google won’t be able to crawl your site. Needless to say, this will hurt your SEO performance. Check Search Console for any errors, and use our WordPress troubleshooting guides to resolve them. 

Redirect chains

Redirect chains occur when a browser is constantly redirected to different pages. Not to be confused with 301 or 302 redirects, which are legitimate and very useful. Redirect chains are like endless loading loops. 

Why is this a problem? 

Well, every website has what’s called a crawl budget: the number of pages on the site that a search engine will crawl in a certain time period. If a site exceeds the crawl budget, the chances are that it will get penalised for SEO. 

The number one reason for exceeding the crawl budget? You guessed it, redirect chains. 

• Slower page load times: Redirect chains makes webpages load slower. Search engines are affected by them too. Whenever a crawler encounters a 3XX status code (301 in the case of redirects), it has to send an additional URL request, which increases crawl times and lowers your crawl budget. Any loss in crawl budget means the search engine can’t crawl your website effectively, which could hurt your SEO performance.
• Delayed crawling: Search engines typically only follow a handful of hops during a crawl (about five in the case of Google) to save resources and avoid dead ends. The more the hops, the more the chances of losing crawl budget and having indexing issues.
• Lost link equity: There is always some loss in page authority or link equity when a redirect takes place. The more redirects in your redirect chain, the more link equity you’ll lose.

Duplicate content

Mistakes during the migration process can lead to duplicate content: URLs, folders, page titles, descriptions, and headings. Search engines don’t like duplicate content, and will penalize you for it. Some ways to fix duplicate content issues:

• Set up redirect rules in .htaccess so that only one version of each page is accessible to a visitor.
• Redirect any IP addresses to URLs.
• Either the www or non-www version of your site should be accessible. Redirect any other versions to the proper URL.
• If your site has search functionality, noindex all the search result pages.
• Canonicalize the appropriate pages on your new site to prevent duplicate content generated by URL query strings.

SEO is important for sites. We recommend doing sufficient research on SEO migrations to stave off any side effects of migration.

Troubleshooting WordPress migrations

We hope you don’t need this section, but if you used the manual method, chances are, you ran into some of these issues. 

Even with a perfect migration checklist, some problems may pop up. Each site, host, user, and network are unique, and they don’t always get along.

Let’s work through the issues you’re facing with your site on the new hosting.

Site looks different

Maybe you didn’t use Migrate Guru and chose another method or did it manually. Hopefully, you have a backup. 

Restore that backup on the original hosting and check the settings. To be safe, update all outdated plugins and themes. Remove any not in use. If you’re using a page builder, it might be causing trouble. Try deactivating it and switch to a default theme to see if that helps.

Site isn’t loading or shows an error

Did you change URLs when switching domains? You may need to search and replace the old domain with the new one across the database with a specialized tool or plugin.

Migration plugin failed

This might be due to the size of your site. If your site’s database is large, many plugins may struggle. Migrate Guru is best suited for larger sites, so consider using it if size is a concern.

Error Establishing a Database Connection

This error means there’s an issue with the database connection. Did you change the database prefix? Check the wp-config.php file for the default prefix wp_.

Also, make sure the database credentials (DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_HOST) are correct in the wp-config.php file. The database server might also be down, which the web host will need to fix.

Critical Error

This error is not helpful. However, with migrations, it usually means a PHP error. While this doesn’t give much detail, you can troubleshoot WordPress errors in several ways.

If none of the solutions above work, you can either reach out to your host’s support team or hire a developer. If we had a failed migration, we would wipe the server, reinstall WordPress, and use Migrate Guru. 

Why WordPress site migrations fail

Site migrations can fail for several reasons:

• Errors caused by certain types of plugins like caching plugins, redirect plugins, etc.
• WordPress and PHP versions don’t match on the source and destination WordPress installations.
• Real-time changes were made to the database or critical files like the wp-config.php and .htaccess files during migration.
• Links weren’t updated in the site database properly.

Why we don’t recommend manual migration

Manual WordPress migration to another host is nothing short of a nightmare. Apart from the time it takes to do, there are many factors that can upend the process. 

We tried manual migration several times, and each time there were many things that went wrong. So much so that we restarted the process a fair few times before succeeding.

• During migration, the last thing you want is to have downtime. You need your site to be up and running. 
• You need developers to migrate sites manually, or need to ask your web hosts for help. It is an extra cost with the former, and a tedious process with the latter. 
• Transferring from one host to another can have conflicts. Perhaps they have customised WordPress installs or different PHP versions.
• Data loss is a real issue. You can lose content or even your entire site during a migration. Especially if your site is large, there is danger of timeouts during transfers.
• SEO rankings can tank if the migration isn’t done correctly.
• When changing core files or database settings, one typo will crash the whole site.

Overall, migration is a time-consuming process that is prone to human error.

Although we experienced many of these issues firsthand, we didn’t experience all of them. We’re certain that even more things can go wrong. And we would have been stuck in a pit of frustration and despair.

Best practices to move WordPress sites

There are a few measures to take so that your site migration is smooth. This list repeats some of these measures in the checklists above, but they still apply. 

• Take a backup of your site before doing anything to it.
• Use a dedicated migration plugin like Migrate Guru. Or use the migration feature of a good backup plugin like BlogVault. 
• Keep all your credentials handy. This includes credentials for both the source and destination servers, wp-admin, and the domain registrar. 
• Make sure to install the same versions of WordPress and PHP on the destination server as is on the host. If necessary update the source first, if you cannot configure the destination one. 
• Deactivate all plugins and all but a single stock theme. This is especially important for caching and firewall plugins. 
• Prevent users from making changes with a maintenance mode plugin.
• Make sure to go through the entire post-migration checklist. If you are changing your domain, you need to set up redirects to keep your SEO equity intact.

For the most part, plugins make WordPress migration significantly easier. Following these best practices will save you a great deal of time and effort as well. 

Reasons to migrate your site

No one undertakes site migration for fun. There is a very real danger of losing your site and all your hard work during a failed migration. Most admins are leery of the process. Additionally, migration can be quite technical. If you need developers, it can be expensive for something that is not always guaranteed to work. 

So why would anyone want to migrate their site at all? 

The most common type of WordPress migration is moving to a different web host. And there are a ton of good reasons to change your web host.

• If your site is growing, it needs more server and network resources. 
• Some web hosts are better than others. This could be better infrastructure, more responsive support, or even more competitive pricing. 
• If your site experienced a malware attack, your web host may not have handled the situation well. Most web hosts will suspend your site, while others will delete your site outright. 
• You’re changing the design of your site. So you need to move it from a development or staging site to a live environment.

Perhaps you want to change your domain name instead. It can be a huge task, with design, content, and branding changes spread throughout the site. So why change your domain? 

• Rebranding, where your company name has changed so the site has to follow suit.
• Moving in or out of a subdirectory on your site to a top-level domain. An example is moving from blog.yourdomain.com to yourdomainforblog.com.
• Localisation or expansion for country-specific sites; moving a site from a .in or a .co.uk to a .com, or vice versa.
• Merging a mobile site into the desktop version after making the latter responsive. For instance, mobile sites could be on a subdomain, like m.site.com. Instead, you could make the desktop site responsive. This way the address on all devices would then be the same.

As you can see, there are several legitimate reasons to want a change. Your site is not a hostage of a bad web host or an unfortunate brand name. The good news is that migrating your WordPress site is easy and seamless with Migrate Guru.

Structure of a WordPress site and how it impacts migration

You can operate a WordPress site successfully without knowing anything about its structure. But during a migration, it is worth understanding how a WordPress site is built. 

WordPress site structure

There are 2 main parts to any WordPress site: 

• Files and folders
• Database

The files and folders contain the WordPress core, and all plugin and theme files on your site. These can be active or inactive plugins and themes. 

The WordPress database contains all the user-generated content of your site. Things like posts, pages, links, comments, metadata, and so on, are all stored in the database. Each time a page or post loads, a core file will retrieve the correct information from the database.

Relationship between site structure and migration

You may be wondering how site structure is relevant to WordPress migration. Most articles talk about setting up a new server with a fresh installation of WordPress. Then you need to migrate the database and a few choice core files. 

In our experience, this is a sure-fire method to ensure that your site doesn’t migrate correctly. You will end up spending hours troubleshooting broken images or menu links. WooCommerce databases need to migrate in full because of the way table data is stored.

Long story short, always move your entire site during a WordPress migration. Anything less is a bad idea.

Conclusion

WordPress migration is a big undertaking because so many things can go haywire. We definitely recommend against manually migrating a WordPress site for these reasons. 

The best way to migrate a WordPress site to a new host or server is to use Migrate Guru. Migrate Guru is a free plugin, custom-built to provide flawless site migration.

FAQs

How do I migrate an existing WordPress site?

Migrate an existing WordPress site using a dedicated migration plugin like Migrate Guru. Migrate Guru works with all web hosts out of the box, and will migrate all kinds of WordPress sites without downtime. 

What is the easiest way to migrate a WordPress site?

The easiest way to migrate a WordPress site is to use a dedicated WordPress migration plugin like Migrate Guru. Migrate Guru integrates with all major web hosts seamlessly. Use Migrate Guru to migrate a WordPress site with zero downtime and for absolutely free. 

How do I migrate my WordPress site for free?

Install Migrate Guru on your WordPress site and you can migrate it to any web host absolutely for free. Zero downtime, works with all web hosts out of the box, and can move the largest or the smallest sites effortlessly. 

How do I migrate a WordPress site manually?

To migrate a WordPress site manually, you need to take the following steps: 

1. Download a copy of the site files and folders
2. Export the WordPress database
3. Install WordPress on the destination server
4. Upload the site files and folders to the destination folder
5. Drop the existing database on the destination server
6. Import the old site database
7. Check the wp-config.php file to make sure the connection to the database is set up correctly
8. Check all aspects of the migrated site
9. Set up redirects on the old site