How to …

How to Move a WordPress Blog from GoDaddy to HostGator

If you need to move a wordpress blog from GoDaddy to Hostgator, there are certain steps you will need to follow.  Doing them in the right order can help you avoid problems.

1. Create your account at HostGator.  If you don't already have one, get one.  Write down your cPanel login and password.  These will also be used for your FTP program.  Make sure you are set up with enough bandwidth and storage space to support a blog, and that your account allows you to have at least one MYSQL database.  You should get an email with a new IP (used for your FTP) and DNS servers.  Make a note of those.
2. FTP to your GoDaddy account, and download all of the contents of your site with the blog.  Save them to your local drive.
3. Open your wp_config.php file with Notepad.  ONLY use Notepad, because other editors have a tendency to put extra characters (line breaks, etc.) in the file, which can corrupt it.  Write down the database name, database username, and password from this file.  You will need it to login to GoDaddy's MYSQL database to export it.
4. In your GoDaddy control panel, go to your Databases.  Manage the database with the wordpress blog information in it (the name from the wp-config.php file).  Use your username and password that you retrieved from your wp-config.php to login.
5. Select the database.  Click on the Export tab.
6. Enable ‘add Drop Table’, ‘add Auto_Increment value’ and ‘enclosure table and field names with blackquotes’ from the Structure menu
7. Enable ‘Complete inserts’ and ‘Use hexadecimal for binary files’ from Data
8. Check on 'Save as File', then go, and it will ask you for a place on your local drive to save the database.
9. Login to your cPanel at Hostgator.
10. Under MYSQL databases, create a new database.
11. Create a new user.  Write down the password. Then add that user to the database.
12. Login to MyPHPAdmin for that database, and select the new database.  Click 'Import'.
13. Browse to the location of your downloaded version of the MYSQL database (named with a .sql extension by default), and click Go.
14. Modify the wp-config.php file and put the NEW databasename, username and password in the file. REMEMBER!!!  Only use Notepad.  The single biggest issue from WordPress blogs 'breaking' during a move is someone adding some invisible line breaks in their wp-config.php.
15. Open an FTP session to the Hostgator account.
16. Navigate to the public_html folder.  Nothing will be visible if you put it in a folder above the public_html folder.  Public_html is the 'root' of your Hostgator account.  (This is different from GoDaddy.)  If you want to put the blog in a subdirectory, create a directory under the public_html folder.
17. Upload all files from your local drive to the folder in which you want the blog to appear.
18. Remember email!  In your cPanel for Hostgator, add an email account to match the one you used to use with your old account.
19. Login to GoDaddy, and manage Domains.  Edit the DNS servers to point to the new ones (from the email when you created the Hostgator account).  It can take several days for the new DNS to be propogated across the world.  That means that for a few days some people will still see your old site when they type in the URL of your blog, and others will see the new one.  It's a good idea to leave your blog static for a few days.
20. Personally I like to make a small change to the footer of my new blog that only I will notice.  Maybe use two dashes instead of one, or change the copyright notice slightly.  That way I can tell if I'm seeing the old version or the new.  You can also use pagewash.com to view the site without any of your browser cache data messing with you.

That's it.  It's not super-hard, but it's not as easy as 1-2-3, either.  I had a ton of blogs on GoDaddy and switched them over to my Hostgator account.  The steps above come from the notes I made for myself.  The first one took me a long time to do.  It got down to about 20-30 minutes each after a few, using the steps above.

I hope that helps you if you need to move a WordPress blog from GoDaddy to Hostgator.

Linda - http://how.best-free-information.com - The "How" Blog