Recently I found myself charged with moving a dozen wordpress installations to a new web hosting server. Even though I have installed WordPress many, many times, the thought of moving the database of a live website leaves me feeling very anxious but with the help of plug called WP Migrate DB and following these steps you will be moving your wordpress database with confidence.

When you want to migrate a WordPress site, here are three steps to take to prepare:

  1. First, you have to set up a target site. This is where the WordPress site is going to end up in the end. You have to make sure that that target site actually works, that there’s a database in place, and that WordPress is up and running.
  2. Second, you need to migrate all of the files, your themes, your plugins, your uploads, and anything else that pertains to this site. Migrate those files over to the new target site, usually through FTP.
  3. Third, migrate the database, and this is where we’re going to use the plugin, WP Migrate DB, or WP Migrate DB Pro. This really is all there is to it.

Moving the database with WP Migrate DB

  1. Install the WP Migrate Db on both the target and source sites and activate. WP Migrate DB will only helps us export the database from our original site, and then we have to manually import it into the new site. However, we’re using the same plugin to get the information we need from the target site so we can get this process to run seamlessly. 
  2. Now go to Tools/WP Migrate DB on both sites. Copy and paste the new url and new file path from the source to the target site as shown below. This will ensure the migration is seamless. Hit the blue migrate button and your database will be exported to your computer. Screen Shot 2015-06-04 at 7.17.30 PM
  3. Now the scary part … importing the database to the target site using phpMyAdmin. Go to your web hosting control panel (cpanel in my case) and open phpMyAdmin. Select the newly installed WP database and use the “drop” command to delete all the files. 🙂 It’s OK, you can always get them back by running the WP install again. Then click the import button and browse to your your database that you exported from the source site (it will be neatly bundled in an sql.gz file) and import.

WP Migrate DBAnd that’s it, you now have identical sites running on both the source and target locations. If that’s not easy enough there is also a pro version that actually pushes your database from the source to the target. You can learn more about this at www.lynda.com/WP-Migrate-DB-Pro-tutorials/Use-phpMyAdmin-import-database/361683/371015-4.html or on the WP Migrate DB site.