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How do I migrate my website from shared-hosting to an existing VPS?

First, please know that Brownrice will migrate one customer site per service free of charge for new customers.  We're very good at this and happy to do it.

However, if you are migrating multiple sites on your own, say, into a VPS or dedicated server, these are the instructions that we use:

Migrating Multiple Sites

Database Migration:

  1. Connect to current site via FTP and look at the wp-config.php file to see your database credentials: database name, username, password. Write these down/paste them into notepad.
  2. Log into the phpMyAdmin for the old site via the Brownrice Dashboard, and take an export of the database, using these instructions: How do I export or backup a database?
  3. Log into the phpMyadmin for the new VPS,
  4. Click 'Users' from the menu bar, then click 'Add user'
  5. Enter the exact same username and password, and select Localhost for Host
  6. Check 'Create database with same name and grant all priveleges' under 'Database for User'.
  7. Click 'Go' on the bottom-right.
  8. Click the name of your new database on the left.
  9. Click 'Import' from the menu-bar.
  10. Choose File, and upload the .sql file you downloaded in step 2.
  11. Click Go

File Migration - Setup a new site:

  1. Download all your site files (everything inside /home/domains/yourwebsitename.com/docs/) via FTP.
  2. Log in to your Dashboard
  3. Navigate to VPS HOSTING
  4. Select your VPS: yourvpsname.com 
    -> Click Manage (green button)
  5. Go to the Web Sites
  6. Click Add New Website or Subdomain to this VPS (green button)
  7. Enter the full website name: yourwebsitename.com, and click Add Site.

File Migration - Create a new FTP/SSH User:

  1. o to FTP/SSH Users or SSH Users (depending on the Generation of your VPS)

    or
  2. Click Add User (green button)

    or
  3. Select a username and password
  4. Save

File Migration - Use FTP/SSH User to upload files to the new server:

  1. Connect via FTP to the VPS (use the IP address, shown next to 'Assigned IPs' in the VPS details, as the hostname).
  2. Upload all your site files to /home/domains/yourwebsitename.com/public/
  3. Log in to your Dashboard
  4. Navigate to VPS HOSTING
  5. Select your VPS: yourvpsname.com 
    -> Click Manage (green button)
  6. Go to the Web Sites
  7. Click the Reset link to reset file-permissions
  8. After that everything should be in place.  You can take a look at the site on the VPS by adding the following lines to your /etc/hosts file on your local machine (google for instructions for your local machine OS): 
    {IP address of the VPS} yourwebsitename.com
{IP address of the VPS} www.yourwebsitename.com
  9. Once you've verified the site looks good, you can update the DNS A record to point to thenew IP address, and the site will be live on the VPS!

Contact us to have us remove the shared-hosting account.

Tags: migrate, migration, shared hosting, vps, website

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