Welcome to the first session of migrating your website.
In this lesson we will explore how you can change hosting providers as well as your domain
name.
Why would someone want to migrate their site?
Well, some of the reasons might be due to moving to a new host, changing your domain name
or moving from HTTP to HTTPS.
This tutorial is right for you if you want to move WordPress hosts as well as change
your domain name.
All you will need to do is set up a new site and install a migration plugin on both your
old and new websites.
And also remember to make a backup of your site on a device before starting the migration.
There are various migration plugins available in the Plugins Directory.
Plugins such as Duplicator, Backup Migration and All-in-One WordPress Migration are just
some of the plugins worth exploring.
Some hosts even have their own migration plugins if you were planning to move your site to
them.
Today I am going to use the All-in-One WordPress migration plugin.
So once you have set up your new domain with your new host, let's make our way to the front
end of our old website which we are of course going to transfer to a new home.
Our first tip now is to make our way to the dashboard, head to plugins and add the All-
in-One migration plugin.
Once it is installed and activated, we will make our way to the plugin in the left sidebar
and then click on Export to and then select File.
It is also advised to export to an external drive to ensure you have a backup.
When you click on File, it will start preparing the export.
And once completed, we can click on Download and download the file to our computer.
The next step is to make our way to our new domain and install the plugin there as well.
We need the plugin on the old website and the new one as we are exporting and importing
from one to the other.
And once the plugin has been installed and activated, we can hover over the plugin in
the left sidebar and click on Import.
And now we are going to import or upload the file from our computer.
And please take note, this might take a few minutes.
And once the process has been completed, we can click on Proceed as we have not added
any other content to the new site.
And lastly, Finish.
And now if we make our way to the front end of our new domain, we will see that the entire
site has been transferred or migrated.
Before we end off, there is one last consideration.
If you were concerned about SEO, it is advised to set up 301 redirects.
A 301 redirect indicates to search engines that a page has been moved permanently.
It basically means that if users request an old URL, they will automatically be sent
to a new URL.
There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest way is to use a plugin such as Redirection,
Simple 301 Redirects or All-in-One SEO
to ensure you don't lose your website's search engine rankings, traffic and conversions.
You can search the Plugins Directory to find the right plugin for you.
But I did want to mention some plugins may offer additional and faster ways to set up
redirects through paid features.
But it is also possible to change the redirects one by one using many free versions of plugins.
All the best migrating your site to a new hosting provider and domain name.