Joomla Migration with the Help of FileZilla and phpMyAdmin
Introduction
This tutorial describes how to move an existing Joomla installation to a hosting.fr web space using SFTP and phpMyAdmin. As an alternative to this tutorial, you can refer to the tutorial “Joomla Migration by Backup and Restore with a Backup Plugin”, which is easier to implement for beginners.
This tutorial only deals with the relocation of Joomla. How to also move your domain is described elsewhere.
In this tutorial, we will proceed as follows:
- Export the database data using phpMyAdmin at the old hosting provider
- Import the database data using phpMyAdmin at hosting.fr
- Download the data from the web space using FileZilla via SFTP or FTP
- Modify the configuration file to adjust the database credentials
- Upload the data to the new web space at hosting.fr
Step 1: Verify Prerequisites
- You already have an existing Joomla installation at a provider from which you want to migrate to hosting.fr.
- The phpMyAdmin software is available at your old provider, and you know the MySQL / MariaDB database credentials used.
- You know the FTP or SFTP credentials of your old provider. Normally, after logging in, you can find this information in your provider’s client interface.
- You have a web space and a database at hosting.fr that you can use for Joomla.
Step 2: Migrate Database Content with phpMyAdmin
To migrate the database content, the use of the phpMyAdmin tool is recommended. phpMyAdmin is a web-based graphical interface for editing the content of a MySQL / MariaDB database, but it also allows exporting or importing the entire database content.
Export the Database
The phpMyAdmin tool is already installed at most providers and is accessible via the client interface. Alternatively, it can also be installed manually.
Access phpMyAdmin.
Log in to phpMyAdmin:
After logging in, you arrive on the following page:
If you have subscribed to a simple web hosting package, you will find only two links to databases in the navigation on the left. The “information_schema” database contains only metadata and does not interest us further. Therefore, select the other database. You should now see the Joomla tables as in the following image:
Click here on “Export”.
Please select the “quick” option and the “SQL” format. Then click “OK”. Save the file offered for download on your computer.
Import the Database
Access phpMyAdmin. You can find how to access the tool at hosting.fr in “Where to find phpMyAdmin?”. How to find the credentials at hosting.fr is described in the article “Where to find my database credentials?”.
Log in to the phpMyAdmin section of hosting.fr:
After logging in, you will also arrive on the following page:
If you have subscribed to a simple web hosting package, you will find only two links to databases in the navigation on the left. The “information_schema” database contains only metadata and does not interest us further. Therefore, select the other database, which starts with the prefix “db”. You will access the following display:
Select the “Import” option.
Click on “Browse…” and choose the MySQL dump file from your computer. Then click “OK” to import the data. A message “The import was successful.” should appear. On the left side in phpMyAdmin, the imported tables for Joomla should now appear. The import of the database data into the new database is thus complete.
Configure Filezilla and Download Files from the Old Web Space
To transfer the files from the old provider to hosting.fr, first download them using the FTP or SFTP client FileZilla with the credentials you received from your old provider. The FileZilla client can be downloaded from the FileZilla project website for Windows, OSX, or Linux. We recommend establishing the connection in FileZilla via the “SSH File Transfer Protocol” (SFTP). If this protocol is not available, FTP can also be used. In this case, however, the data will be transmitted unencrypted over the Internet.
Create a Server Profile and Establish Connection to the Web Space in FileZilla
We will first create a server profile for your old provider:
- Launch the FileZilla tool. Create a new server profile in the “Server Manager” under “File” > “Server Manager”.
Click on “New Server”.
Select the “SSH File Transfer Protocol” (SFTP). If SFTP is not available at your old provider, please choose FTP.
Enter under “Server” the server address of the old provider.
Choose the port that was indicated to you by your provider. If no port was communicated to you, please select port 22. If SFTP is not available at your old provider and you have to choose FTP as the transfer method, please choose port 21.
Enter the username and password for the web space.
For better readability, you can name the server profile, for example, “old provider Joomla”, by selecting the profile in the tree on the left and pressing “F2”.
Then create another server profile for the new web space hosting.fr. You can find how to obtain the credentials in the article “Where to find my FTP/SFTP credentials?”.
Click again on the “New Server” button.
Select the “SSH File Transfer Protocol” (SFTP).
Enter under “Server” the server address that you find in the management “FTP/SSH/Statistics Users” of your hosting.fr web hosting package.
Select port 2244.
Enter the username and password for the web space.
For better readability, you can name the server profile, for example, “hosting.fr Joomla”, by selecting the profile in the tree on the left and pressing “F2”.
Finally, click on “OK”.
- FileZilla will ask if you want to save the password for your web space. Select “Save Password”. However, we recommend storing the password securely by choosing a master password.
Download Files from the Old Provider
Launch the server manager again. Select the profile of your old provider and click on “Connect”. If you have set a master password for FileZilla, you may then be questioned about it.
FileZilla will then ask if you trust the server’s cryptographic fingerprint. Please select “Always trust this server, save this key.”
Once the connection is established, please navigate through the list of files and folders on the right until you find the files shown in the following image and thus the root directory of Joomla at your old provider.
Select all files on the right. Then right-click on the files and choose “Download”. The file download begins, and the progress for each file is displayed at the bottom of the screen.
Wait until the file download is complete. Then disconnect from the SFTP server:
The files will only be uploaded to the new web space after modifying the configuration file of the Joomla installation in the next step.
Adjust Configuration Files for the New Database
Since the database credentials, i.e., especially the username and password, at hosting.fr are different from those of the old provider, they must be modified in the configuration files before uploading. To do this, the configuration.php file must be edited with a text editor. We recommend using the Visual Studio Code editor from Microsoft. It can be downloaded for free from Microsoft and is available for all common operating systems. Open the configuration.php file with Visual Studio Code or any other suitable text editor. In the file, you will find the following lines:
public $host = 'my.database.server';
public $user = 'myDatabaseUser';
public $password = 'mySecretPassword';
public $db = 'myDatabaseName';
Please enter the database name, username, and password for the database server, as well as the database server address in the file. How to find the credentials at hosting.fr is described in the article “Where to find my database credentials?”.
Finally, save the file.
Upload Files to the New Web Space
Once the configuration files for the database have been modified, the Joomla installation files can be uploaded to the new web space. Return to the server manager and connect with the SFTP server hosting.fr.
The files must be uploaded to the correct folder on the server. Normally, this is the ./html/<domain name> directory relative to the directory you land in automatically after connecting to FileZilla. However, this depends on the configuration of your web space for PHP and MySQL. How the basic configuration of the web space for PHP and MySQL is done is described in the article “How to configure my domain and web space for PHP and MySQL?”.
Select all downloaded files and folders and upload them to the server.
Conclusion of the Migration
Finally, access your Joomla site in the web browser and check all functionalities.
The Joomla administration backend can be reached by adding /administrator/ to the domain in the browser’s address bar, i.e., for example via https://mustermann-domain.com/administrator/.
If everything works as desired, the site migration is then complete.
In Case of Problems: Troubleshooting Tips
If, after the migration, you only see the message “Error” in your new Joomla, you can change the error display in the configuration.php file by changing it from default to maximum. To do this, replace the line
public $error_reporting = 'default';
with
public $error_reporting = 'maximum';
and then upload the file to the root directory of Joomla with FileZilla, where a file with the same name already exists.
If you manage to find the error, please restore this option.
If Joomla fails to connect to the database, the message “Warning: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /tmp) […] Error: Failed to start application: Failed to start the session” may appear. Please then check the database credentials once more.
It is often helpful to enter the error message into one of the appropriate internet search engines.