How to Migrate WordPress Site to New Domain Without Plugin

Moving your WordPress website to a new domain might sound tricky, but it’s simpler than you think. You don’t need a plugin to get it done. With a few careful steps, you can shift everything smoothly and keep your site working just the way it should.

A Quick Prep Guide Before You Move Your Website

Careful planning is needed for a successful WordPress domain migration. If you take the time to do a few important things before you start the transfer process, you can avoid a lot of problems, downtime, and data loss.

• Full Backup

The most important thing to do before changing anything on your live website is to make a full and verified backup of your entire WordPress installation including your website files (themes, plugins, media uploads, and core WordPress files) as well as your database. 

• Ensure Everything is Updated

When you move your website, old WordPress core files, themes, or plugins can cause problems with compatibility or make things work in ways you didn’t expect. Therefore, make sure that all parts of your WordPress website are up to date before you start the export. 

• Site Cleanup

Cleaning up your site before you move it will help you make your migration package smaller and speed up the transfer process. This means, remove any themes or plugins, old images or media files, and clean out old post revisions, spam comments, and temporary options by hand.

• Set Up Your New Domain Before You Begin

Make sure that your new domain name is registered and your new hosting account is set up and ready to go. 

Step-By-Step Moving Your Website Manually

Step 1 – 

Make backups of your website files and database and save the copy in a separate folder on a different server. Since you’ve already created a backup in the preparation step, you can use that same copy here. Just make sure it’s complete and easily accessible before you move ahead.

Step 2 – 

Log in via SFTP and upload your backup to the web space of your new domain. If you made your backup with File Manager, remember to unzip it before uploading.

Step 3 – 

Import your database backup using phpMyAdmin. 

Step 4 – 

Depending on the database or phpMyAdmin settings where the original backup of your database was made, you might see an error message between steps 3 and 4. Go to step 5 if you don’t see any errors. If you see an error message, it usually means that the backup of your SQL database you’re trying to import has references to either the old database name or the old database username, and you need to update those references.

• If you see this error, open your database backup file in a plain text or code editor like Notepad or VS Code. Avoid tools like MS Word, as they can mess up the file and cause issues.
• Go through the text file and update any old database name or username with the new. And then save the updated database backup file.
• Try to import the above updated SQL file again by repeating step 3 as described before.
• Please get in touch with your support team if you still get an error message. Or else, you can move on to step 5 if you don’t see an error message.

Step 5 – 

After importing your database, find the table ending with _options on the left and open it. Then update your site’s location in two places.

1. In this table ending with _options, find siteurl and home in the option_name column. They’re usually listed right at the top.
2. Find siteurl and click Edit next to it.
3. This will open a window showing the option_value field.
4. Update the old domain with your new one then click Go, present at the right bottom, to save the changes.
5. Do the same for home.

Step 6 – 

Now update the login details to match your new domain.

Step 7 – 

Check the performance of your site on a new domain by taking the old site offline by renaming the index.php file so it doesn’t interfere.

Follow these steps:

• Open the File Manager of your old domain.
• Select index.php and click Rename.
• Give it a new name, like index-oldfile.php (no spaces needed).
• Press Enter to save.

Open your new domain in a browser to make sure everything works, though you might need to fix a few things manually.

Step 8 –

To avoid 404 errors after moving your site, update your permalinks:

• Log in to WordPress Admin.
• Go to Settings > Permalinks.
• Scroll down and click Save Changes.
• This makes sure that all your pages keep working smoothly.

Step 9 – 

If some of your images aren’t showing properly because they are still pointing to your old domain, then just replace or reinsert them.

Step 10 – 

Your website should now be fully moved with all images and links. If anything looks off, contact your support team.

Conclusion

You don’t need a plugin to move your WordPress website; it is very simple and easy. Now you must have understood how to do it manually. If you want to make it simpler, then choose host.co.in’s reliable WordPress hosting and run your website smoothly.