How do I give the newspaper back their site?
April 25, 2009 9:58 AM Subscribe
Best way to transfer WordPress site to new host without losing anything?
I maintain the website for our high school newspaper (can be seen here) and as the year is ending, I need to get everything going for next year's staff.
The difficulty is that I built (when I say built I mean used WordPress and a template, then with some intermediate modifications) and hosted it on my own hosting provider (Dreamhost) using domains that I bought and generates revenue with my AdSense account and the stats are tracked using my Google Analytics account.
Had the process of doing all that been more thought through - I probably would have created accounts for the paper from the get-go, but the other editors and I just wanted to see something happen.
Alas, here I am and next year, the adviser wants to have the same setup - just under accounts that the newspaper itself will run (different hosting, different adsense, different google account, etc.).
Now, I am no fool - I know that transferring this all will take quite a bit of effort. I am asking for advice on how to make the process as streamlined and easy as possible. Advice MeFi?
(A little info on me - I already had all of those accounts, and they all have other information/data of my own on there, so I just want to transfer the newspaper stuff. I am skilled at CSS and HTML and can work my way though a less complicated Javascript and PHP code. I understand DNS servers, but am unsure of how to best transfer hosting and domains, having never done it before. If anyone can think of any other pertinent info that may help you help me, just ask!)
I maintain the website for our high school newspaper (can be seen here) and as the year is ending, I need to get everything going for next year's staff.
The difficulty is that I built (when I say built I mean used WordPress and a template, then with some intermediate modifications) and hosted it on my own hosting provider (Dreamhost) using domains that I bought and generates revenue with my AdSense account and the stats are tracked using my Google Analytics account.
Had the process of doing all that been more thought through - I probably would have created accounts for the paper from the get-go, but the other editors and I just wanted to see something happen.
Alas, here I am and next year, the adviser wants to have the same setup - just under accounts that the newspaper itself will run (different hosting, different adsense, different google account, etc.).
Now, I am no fool - I know that transferring this all will take quite a bit of effort. I am asking for advice on how to make the process as streamlined and easy as possible. Advice MeFi?
(A little info on me - I already had all of those accounts, and they all have other information/data of my own on there, so I just want to transfer the newspaper stuff. I am skilled at CSS and HTML and can work my way though a less complicated Javascript and PHP code. I understand DNS servers, but am unsure of how to best transfer hosting and domains, having never done it before. If anyone can think of any other pertinent info that may help you help me, just ask!)
This has been coveredat least once in the past. And there is lots of info if you Google too.
It's actually pretty easy.
1. Get the new hosting account setup for the school.
2. Transfer the domain registration to the school. The registrar should have an straightforward way to do this.
3. Install WP-DBbackup & have it backup all the tables in your wordpress installation.
4. tar up your wordpress directory & the backup, copy it to the new hosting account & untar it.
5. Create a new MySQL DB on the new hosting account.
6. Use PHPmyAdmin or the command line mysql tool to restore the database backup you made. PHPmyAdmin is probably easier, but often will have a limit on the file size it can handle. You could also try using wordpress's import/export feature, but I've had problems with file-size limits with that as well.
7. Edit your wp-config.php file to use the username, hostname, password & DB name for the new database.
Check that wordpress is working on whatever temporary domain name you use for the new hosting account. The blog pages should come up fine. If you want to check out the admin interface, you'll have to set some variables in the wp-config.php file that temporarily override the blog domain and the admin URL stored in the DB. I can't remember them off the top of my head, but if you dig around in the docs, you'll find it.
8. Switch the domain registration to point to the new server. Update the adsense codes, etc.
posted by Good Brain at 11:23 AM on April 25, 2009
It's actually pretty easy.
1. Get the new hosting account setup for the school.
2. Transfer the domain registration to the school. The registrar should have an straightforward way to do this.
3. Install WP-DBbackup & have it backup all the tables in your wordpress installation.
4. tar up your wordpress directory & the backup, copy it to the new hosting account & untar it.
5. Create a new MySQL DB on the new hosting account.
6. Use PHPmyAdmin or the command line mysql tool to restore the database backup you made. PHPmyAdmin is probably easier, but often will have a limit on the file size it can handle. You could also try using wordpress's import/export feature, but I've had problems with file-size limits with that as well.
7. Edit your wp-config.php file to use the username, hostname, password & DB name for the new database.
Check that wordpress is working on whatever temporary domain name you use for the new hosting account. The blog pages should come up fine. If you want to check out the admin interface, you'll have to set some variables in the wp-config.php file that temporarily override the blog domain and the admin URL stored in the DB. I can't remember them off the top of my head, but if you dig around in the docs, you'll find it.
8. Switch the domain registration to point to the new server. Update the adsense codes, etc.
posted by Good Brain at 11:23 AM on April 25, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
The steps in the How To: Move Your WordPress Blog to a New Domain article seem pretty complete.
The WordPress Codex also has directions, but they're not as detailed.
Once you've moved it, changing the AdSense & Analytics info shouldn't be too difficult.
posted by belladonna at 11:11 AM on April 25, 2009