When it comes to transferring WordPress content for your blog, or to move around on your server, there are a few different ways you can get started. Learning how to go about transferring WordPress content can be easy if you follow these most basic steps to begin transferring WordPress content around within your server. Fortunately when going through the transferring WordPress content process, you don’t have to worry about reinstalling WordPress because the system is designed to be flexible to handle these situations.
There are many reasons to transfer your WordPress content. For some, it is all about freeing up space on an old server, or maybe the one you are using is running too slowly. For some, transferring WordPress content to a new server is more convenient for those that are creating a new WordPress blog entirely. If you are planning on moving your WordPress to an entirely new server, you need to start by backing up your data. This is the best move you can make or you risk losing all of your content when you go about transferring your WordPress content to a new server. When you do your backups, make sure you back up all of your core files, images, plugins and any other files you have on your WordPress site. If you have any questions on how go about backing up your WordPress content before you get started, you are going to need to consult with the WordPress codex for WordPress backups and Backing Up Your Database articles for more information.
Remember, if you are changing to a new server but keeping your same domain, all you will need to do in this process is edit wp-config.php and upload everything like it is your new sever.
For those WordPress users that don’t care if your old blog works anymore when you are transferring WordPress content to a new server, all you need to do is download a copy of the main WordPress files that are in your old blog and back those up to your hard drive and edit wp-config.php to suite your new server to which you are switching all of your new content. Now you can go back to your old blog once again and select the Administration tab followed by Settings and General to change the URL (both of them) to your new website. Now, again download your database, keeping the old one just in case something goes wrong. Now you are ready to upload your new database as well as the copy of the WordPress core files that are edited in the wp-config.php to your new server.
However, if you still want your old blog to work, you need to first make sure that you have your backups of your old blog and all of the WordPress database files for that blog before you get started. To activate your new blog, start by downloading your WordPress installation to your hard drive. You will want to name this file to indicate it is your OLD blog’s installation information. Now, download your database. Go back to your old blog and navigate through the options in order to change both URLs to that of your new website. Now you can download your entire WordPress installation to your computer hard drive. Save the file appropriately to reflect it is your new blog’s installation. Download your database once again, but keeping the first database name and keep the user name with the same login credentials as the one used on your old server. If you did use a different database name, edit wp-config.php in your new blog’s installation folder. Now you can go ahead and upload the new blog’s installation folder into your new site. Your new blog should now be up and running!
Continuing with this transferring WordPress content tutorial, if you want to restore your old blog, all you need to do is on the original server, delete your old blog’s database. You should have a copy of this still that you made at the very beginning of the process. From here just upload your old blog’s installation folder into the original server. This will overwrite any files that currently exist on the original server. You might also want to delete the installation folder on the server and then simply re-upload your old blog’s files. The final step simply entails you uploading your old blog’s database from your computer to the server. Now you should be set and ready to go. Transferring WordPress content this way provides you with the information you need to both setup and transfer your WordPress content to a new server, but also access your old blog and still keep that readily available on your new or original server depending on where you want it to be located for future reference. If you simply want to get rid of your old blog and don’t care to keep in on the server, you have that option as well.