Migration of Wordpress by Backup and Restore with a Backup Plugin
Introduction
This tutorial describes how to transfer an existing installation of the content management system (CMS) Wordpress from a previous provider to a hosting.fr web space using plugins.
This tutorial only describes the transfer of Wordpress. The transfer of your domain is described elsewhere.
To do this, we will proceed as follows:
- Install the backup plugin in the existing Wordpress installation,
- Export the data from the existing installation,
- Create a new installation on a hosting.fr web space,
- Import the backup data.
Step 1: Check Prerequisites
- You already have an existing Wordpress installation at hosting.fr or a provider from which you want to migrate to hosting.fr.
- It is recommended to update your existing Wordpress installation to the latest stable version of Wordpress.
- You have already configured a domain, a web space, and a database at hosting.fr that you can use for Wordpress.
Step 2: Install the Backup Plugin
The installation of the UpdraftPlus plugin has already been described in the article Installation of Plugins and Themes in Wordpress. Install the plugin as described there in your existing Wordpress installation.
Step 3: Export Data from the Existing Installation
With your previous provider, you will need to export the MySQL or MariaDB database data as well as the files uploaded in Wordpress. Start a manual backup via the “Settings” > “UpdraftPlus Backups” entry. Click on “Backup Now”.
The following message appears. Select “Include your database in the backup” and “Include your files in the backup”.
Download the created backups to your computer. Click in the “Existing Backups” section on the “Database”, “Plugins”, “Themes”, “Uploads”, and “Others” buttons to save the provided files in a folder on your computer.
Step 4: Create a New Wordpress Installation on the Web Space
Install Wordpress on your web space. For this, follow Steps 1 and 2 of the tutorial Installation of Wordpress. All other settings will be restored later from the backup.
Step 5: Import the Backup Data
When you have installed Wordpress, install the UpdraftPlus plugin again, as already described in the article Installation of Plugins and Themes in Wordpress.
Then, you will need to import the backup files into the new Wordpress installation. Click in the admin interface on “Settings” > “UpdraftPlus Backups”.
Under the title “Existing Backups”, you will find in the plugin the link “Upload Backup Files”. Select all files from the previous backup and upload them. Then, the backup will appear in your new Wordpress installation.
Click on the “Restore” button. Then, UpdraftPlus will ask which components should be restored. Check all components. Then click on “Restore” to import the backup into the new Wordpress installation.
The following alert may appear:
The PHP installation on this web server only allows PHP to run for 60 seconds and does not allow this value to be increased. If you are importing a lot of data and the restore process fails, you should ask your host how to increase this value (or do a step-by-step restore).
This message means that the database import should not last more than 60 seconds. Generally, this time is sufficient to import the data. For large websites, it may be necessary to increase this value. For this, the “max_execution_time” value in the PHP options should be increased, depending on the size of the database, for example to 120 seconds.
When the backup has been successfully restored, the message “Restore successful!” will appear at the bottom of the page with the output logs.
The data from the old Wordpress installation has thus been transferred to the new installation. You can log in to the new installation with the data from the old installation:
Finally, open your Wordpress site also in a web browser and check all functionalities.
The Wordpress admin interface is found by adding /wp-admin/ to your domain in the browser’s address bar, for example https://example-domain.com/wp-admin/.
If everything works as desired, the site transfer is thus complete.