Tips For Migrating a WordPress Website To a New And Better Host

Since its launch in 2003, WordPress constantly grew and it evolved from a simple blogging platform into a powerful and yet accessible content management system. Nowadays, most entrepreneurs, artists, lifestyle bloggers, you name it, most of them start with WordPress. If you have time and a bit of knowledge, WordPress is the best way to start a blog. Of course, there are other popular platforms like Squarespace for those who want something more straight forward. The platform’s success comes however from the almost unlimited plugin database, plugins that are able to cover all the requirements and needs of a user, whether they want to blog, sell products, develop a business portal or create an online community. As a consequence, there are many companies that migrated their web pages to WordPress, contributing at the same time to the development of the platform and its continuing popularity growth. With plugins, however, comes higher load times and sometimes a decrease in traffic. Therefore, some websites owner will have to migrate their websites to other, better, more WordPress friendly hosting providers. Before we start talking about some of the best WordPress hosting providers out there, we need to clarify some basic things about this popular CMS.

Why is WordPress so popular?

Although WordPress started as a simple blogging platform, it soon evolved into a real content management system that became probably the most popular in the world. It is one of the most reliable and user friendly CMS’ that exists in present days. There’s no wonder why and how words like wordpresser, wordpressing or wordpressographer have been taken into common language by people worldwide.

The beauty of WordPress stands not only in its easiness of installation and tweaking capabilities but in its diverse community that has gathered around a simple and yet powerful concept. It’s a community that consumes and produces at the same time, giving us thousands and thousands of themes, plugins and other useful tweaks. We cannot talk about WordPress without its plugins which contributed mostly to the evolution from a blogging platform to a real and powerful content management system.

Plugins make the best of WordPress

Basically, plugins are modules that extend the functionalities of the platform. And although they are not a part of the WordPress system, without them the platform would have been nothing more than a blogging platform easy to use but with little usability as a website. If we were to compare WordPress with the human body, we would say that the content management system is the brain while the plugins represent the heart which keeps pumping blood to the head. It is said though, that too many plugins slow down the site and lower performances, but in reality, it is not the number of plugins that has to be taken into account, but the quality of the coding and their compatibility with the WordPress version in use.

Steps to take before migrating a WordPress site to another hosting service

Apart from the plugins used, there is a number of reasons why to migrate to a new hosting provider. The load time is important but at the same time, it is important to have a good uptime, 24/7 technical support and a consistent bandwidth.

Before starting the migration, you need to make backups. If you’re on a CPanel supporting hosting, this task is quite simple, as CPanel has a built-in app that can create a full files and databases backup to be saved on the main ftp account. Of course, if you are not skilled in these types of tasks, there are always some plugins available to help you backup and migrate as easy as it gets.

Plugins that are useful for WordPress migration

We’ve already talked about the power of WordPress plugins and their importance in developing the community and making this blogging platform a viable CMS suitable for any kind of business. There are of course several plugins that can help you migrate to a new hosting provider and these are the three most accessible and easy to use of them:

1. Duplicator: (https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/ ) A flexible and versatile plugin, duplicator allows you to safely backup and migrate the WordPress website by duplicating its content.
2. WP Migrate DB:  (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/ )This plugin focuses on migrating the WordPress database, the most troublesome thing website owners have to deal with when trying to backup a website and reinstall it on a new server.  It makes a good choice because it simplifies the process of finding and replacing URLs and file paths. If you migrate to the same URL, then you have nothing to worry about but if you are changing the domain name, you can find it difficult to make all the changes needed in order to successfully migrate your website. This plugin takes charge of everything related to these issues and quite comfortably, solves them for you.
3. All-in-One WP Migration: (https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/) This is a free plugin that can be enhanced with premium extensions which does exactly what its name sais: it helps the user migrate a website to a new hosting service. In some cases it might be better than the previous ones because it has the ability to bypass server upload/download restrictions by exporting and importing files in 3 second time chunks.

Hosting services to migrate your website to

Choosing the best web hosting for WordPress depends solely on your needs. There are a few WordPress provider out there and you can find the biggest ones below.

1. Hostgator. It’s the most popular hosting provider for both, individual users and business owners. They host over 8 million domains and offer 1-click WordPress
2. Bluehost. This provider has been around for years. It is known to be a bit more pricey but overall reliable.
3. DreamHost. DreamHost has been around for 18 years and is known for making web hosting easy. DreamHost powers over 600,000 WordPress blogs and websites. There are no setup fees, and you also get a free domain.
4. LCN – LCN offers tailor-made solutions for WordPress blogs. From your WordPress hosting to custom templates, they have everything to get you started or migrate from a different provider.

Conclusion

Migrating your WordPress website shouldn’t be very difficult if you have a tiny bit of WordPress knowledge. And when it comes to hosting, you will just have to choose the one that works for you the best.
Have something to add to this article? Let us know in the comments below.

Bonus: Check out this article about the best Business WordPress Themes.

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