Migrating a WordPress Blog

As you can see, I haven’t posted here in a loooooooong time.  There is good reason: I just became totally frustrated with my host.  They insisted the site loaded fast, showing me benchmark sites and such….but the truth is that I could hardly log into the thing, and uploading pictures was a nightmare of timing out.  I didn’t want to even see the site anymore, so I put it off….and put it off….and put it off….and finally let the whole thing slip from my mind.

Until about a month ago, when I started getting expiration notices.  Hmmmm.  So after a lot of soul searching, I decided to give this blog another try, but to move it to a host that I know works well.  I’m not posting names of either host, as I am guessing it truly is not my original host’s fault, but rather a log jam somewhere between their server and my location.

I set up the add-on domain on the host I wanted to move to, and then it was time to hit Google.  How in the world do I move my WP blog to the new place?  I mean, I’ve backed up things before, pretty simple to move files, right?  Except things for WP lives in the database, and I didn’t know how to move that.  I read through some very cryptic instructions, and then….ta da!  I found this site with full instructions:

ManageWP

This handy little plug in lets you manage a bunch of things on your WP, including doing a complete backup…..AND unpacking it in the new location….all nice and automagically.

I’d like to say I had no trouble at all, but of course I did…..but all user error.  Most of it was really because I didn’t wait long enough (story of life, huh?  Git ‘er dun).  I switched my nameserver over to the new host, and then immediately went about installing WP and unpacking my backup to the new site….and then wanted to log in and edit things.  Well, I had a lot of time outs.  You guessed it, the browser was directing to the old host.  Now there were instructions online on how to force your computer to map to the new IP address, but I didn’t really want to mess with it.  So, I decided to just cancel the old hosting account, and sleep on it.

Once my old host cancelled, all my slowness problems cleared up, and I’m happily typing to you.  Whew!

I look forward to bringing you more JAM goodness in the coming weeks!

About Dawn

Dawn is a 40 something stay at home momprenuer with two homeschooled children.
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