If you’ve ever had to move your site to a new hosting company, you know it can be a headache.
Recently, as I was about to release my new product for affiliate marketers, which was my first product in over a year, I decided it was time to move on from Hostnine to new web host.
Today I’ll share my site migration experience with you so you can easily backup or move any of your WordPress sites in minutes.
Having fresh backups gives you peace of mind knowing you can always recover from a crash or a hack. But even if you have backups, you need to know how to restore them quickly. That’s the knowledge I was lacking, but not anymore.
First off, I have to admit, I shopped around a LOT for a new host. When I purchase something online I usually read a lot of reviews first.
After days of shopping and comparing, I ended up coming back to HostGator. Their new cloud offerings were just too good to pass up. Inexpensive, flexible and speedy – just the combination I was looking for.
But my main concern was being able to get support when I needed it. Years ago I was with them and their support was lousy. However I recently had heard that they totally revamped their support, so I decided to put it to the test.
I picked up the phone and called as if I was a client already. I got an actual human on the phone within one minute. Next I tried their chat support. Again, it was nearly immediate. That matched up with everything I was reading about their new service department, so I pulled the trigger.
I went with the Business Cloud server and after ordering I opened a migration ticket. A week later they had all my sites moved without me lifting a finger. Awesome.
I tested out all my sites in something they call their “swamp” and everything worked great.
Next I changed the nameserver settings of my domain names to my new server, waited a few days to test again, and then put in the request to cancel my old host at the end of their billing cycle.
All set, right?
Wrong! A few days later I realized I forgot to request the migration of an entire website!
Not wanting to wait for the migration team again, I decided I’d try to move the site myself. I had never done this before and I’m not too technically inclined, but figured it would be a great skill to have.
So I logged into the WordPress Admin area of that site on my old server. (I’m glad I told my old host to cancel at the end of the billing cycle and not immediately!)
In the admin area of WordPress I tried to use the plugin I had there called backup buddy. Lots of people love it but for some reason, I just don’t get along with that plugin. Too many steps for me — I like things REALLY SIMPLE.
So I clicked Plugins—> Add New and started searching. Within a few minutes I found a plugin called Duplicator.
It had over a million active downloads, a five star rating and was updated just weeks ago. (Regularly updated plugins are safest to use.)
So I clicked install, activated it and watched a video on how to use it.
I could not believe how simple it was! I literally clicked a few buttons and had a backup of the entire site, called a Package. I then uploaded the package (containing just two files) to my new host via FTP, and within minutes had the entire site migrated.
In fact, I loved it so much I got their Duplicator Pro plugin. Their Pro plugin lets you backup multiple sites on an automated schedule, and it transfers the backups to the Cloud Storage of your choice, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3.
Here’s a video showing you how simple it is to use Duplicator Pro…
The next day I put the Duplicator Pro plugin on all my sites and clients sites, and scheduled weekly backups. Now I never have to worry about losing a site. And I know how to restore from backup in minutes, in case I ever need to.
So, in closing….
If you need a low cost, reliable web host, I urge you to check out the new cloud offerings from Hostgator.
Here’s my link for a special discount.
And if you want peace of mind knowing you have regular backups of your WordPress sites AND can restore them easily, grab Duplicator Pro from my link here.
There’s also a discount at that page too. (Click the text below the purchase options to save 10%.)
Now get busy backing up those sites!
Thanks Jim!
This is seems to be an excellent plugin.
Thank you for useful information.
I have gone through some of the plugins and other server based software out there and some are good. But this one seems ridiculously simple to use.
Yeah, that’s what I liked about it Edouard. I like simple.
Hi Jim,
A very useful post. I did not realise there was a WordPress plugin for backing up your website.
I downloaded and installed it, ran the plugin for the first time trying to do a backup and I received a warning message that the file size is too large, however it does not indicate which file or files as far as I can tell. Any ideas on how I can find out.
Thanks
Philip
I got that warning on one of my sites too Philip, I just moved forward with it and everything worked fine. But if it does not work and times out on, you can filter out the large file. When creating a new package under the “Archive” options check, ‘Enable File Filters’ and add look for the big file. If you can’t find the culprit you can get help at their support page here: https://snapcreek.com/support/
Hi Jim,
I agree with you having used the Duplicator plug-in for a fair number of years that it is one of, if not The best WordPress back-up tool available,
When building a new Package creating a zipped file complete copy of the entire website then also including a separate easy to use Installer file making re-installation a total breeze was initially what impressed me the most, however that’s not the only use for it,
I discovered early on that if I installed a generic copy of the WordPress script (downloaded directly from wordpress.org) and then installed my favourite WP Theme and all of the plug-ins that I always use on all of my sites plus deleting all of the other add-on that I never use, then configured the theme and many of the plug-ins to my usual requirement and once done then create a Duplicator Package from it,
When I next wanted to install a new WordPress based website I could simply just use my generic website copy Duplicator package for the fresh installation and I had my theme and many of the plug-ins already set-up to my requirements ready to customize for that particular site saving a good few hours of laborious slog each time, superb! 🙂
Hey, that’s a brilliant use of the Duplicator plugin – I may have to borrow that idea!
Thanks Jim for the info; however, it’s about four weeks too late for me. I moved to hosting with a lifetime option Though they were willing to migrate for free it was only for websites that had a cpanel, which my old one did not have. I’m still trying to sort it out. The brilliant idea above with duplicator reminded me of a plugin I have somewhere called deployer.