I have to do this in a few days from now. As a LAMP newbie, I was scared shitless about how to move my site to a new VPS. There seemed to be no easy way to do this. The site in question contains a pile of WordPress blogs (10 of them), all those databases, a lot of static pages and gigabytes of images… a total nightmare.

The few guides I managed to find on the Net about how to move wordpress blogs to a new server were too scary. Backups of databases, copying folders, recreating stuff on the new server, setting up all plugins and options… maddening stuff. Several times, I thought about backing off and sticking to the current web hosting service.

But I have found a way! Well, some smart people have found the way to do this easily and well. I thought I should use this opoprtunity to point them out to anyone who has been faced with the same problem.

This works only if you have cPanel as your web hosting control panel on both the servers. if you don’t, sorry. You have to do it the hard way in that case.

If all you have is a WP blog on a domain, just ask the host first. They may just give you a full backup which you can hand over to the new host. Ask, ask!

All hope is not for those who want to move entire websites or WordPress blogs without cPanel, though. A friend of mine is about to write a blog post on how to do it using SSH and maybe 5 mins per blog. That would give you the answers.

if you have cPanel – in layman’s terms – you just have to take a full backup of your site using Cpanel. You can take a full backup of your entire account, choose one of the several options, get the backup to the new server, and restore the entire account, including your files, images, WordPress or other blogs, even emails!

Let me not attempt to explain how to transfer your WP blog or domain or account to another web server in detail here. I am abound to mess it up.

So here are the people who would give you step by step instructions in their blogs on how to easily effect the transfer using cPanel. On we go!

1.Justin-Cook.com guide to moving domains / accounts / sites using cPanel. This is what I plan to follow. Hopefully it would work well. It is the best-explained guide I have seen so far. Great work, Justin.

2. cPanel.net help files. Basic, but still useful for effectiung succesful website transfers. Scroll down to Transfers in the left frame and read up.

3. Looks almost like a copy of Justin Cook’s guide. But read up. Domain transfer using cPanel is so easy and save so much of your time that you should not complain if I ask you to read one more article. Please read. You will feel more confident when you actually have to do it.

4. One more. This is ultra short. Maybe this is what you need.

4. Your new web host may do it for you. Ask them. HostGator does it. Many others do. You may not need to worry at all.

5. If your worry is about Wordpress transferring well, worry about something else. WP transfer is not what matters, its an account transfer using cPanel. This is much easier, and your WP would get transfered when your account gets transferred. Easier this way.

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