When you should move wordpress site to new server? Well most of us think to migrate the wordpress site to the new server on the day when your previous hosting expires.
But any criticalities in migration can cause a downtime to your website and thus be affecting your website ranking.
In some cases, it works but in most of the cases, you require enough time to move your wordpress site to new server.
Many hosting provides offers you free wordpress website migration at the time of purchase of hosting plan, but they also take at least 48 hours to completely migrate your wordpress website and get it stabilized.
This is not a case study or any guide, it is my personal experience of migrating my wordpress website from one hosting provider to another and the kind of difficulty I faced.
It does not mean that you should not try any new hosting provider or hire some freelancer to move wordpress site to new server. After facing the lots of difficulties I still managed to migrate my website, but of course with a delay.
Never the less it was a learning experience and also a motivation to write this post and guide my readers to decide their correct time for wordpress website migration.
Move WordPress Site To New Server
What are the situations under which you are forced to move the wordpress site to the new server?
- Migrating to a new hosting provider
- Upgrading you hosting plans
- Migrating your website to a new domain name
There may be ‘n’ number of reasons for your wordpress website migration, but the most important thing is to avoid downtime.
Having long downtime you not only lose your visitors but it also affects your website google ranking.
Of course, I have the little knowledge of programming and lots of experience too. But till the time you don’t get issues while migrating your website, you will never learn.
There are tons of tutorials and wordpress plugins offering you free tutorials to move wordpress site to new server, even most of the web hosting providers have also started to offer free wordpress migration service with an initial purchase of their hosting plans.
I have tried them all but could not avoid the downtime for your website. That is the reason I am sharing my personal experience of moving wordpress site to new server.
Personal Experience
I had started bloggersutra.com in November 2016 with 1&1 hosting offering free domain name for new customers. There was never a problem while hosting my website on 1&1.com.
In November 2017 my website started getting traffic and I thought this is the right time to upgrade the hosting plans. But the hosting plans for the second year with 1&1 was costly and I was having limited earning from my website.
In November you also find the best hosting deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. So even I could not resist migrating my website to a new hosting provider offering huge discounts.
I did a extensive research on the internet to find the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal.
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Finally, my search ended with Bluehost – Among best wordpress hosting provider (checkout Review 2018). I purchased their plan and now it was the time to migrate my website to the new server.
I had a chat with Bluehost support team and they assured me that once I migrate the complete website to Bluehost server and change the name server for my domain name. my website will be up and running within two hours of propagation of name servers over the internet.
Everything looks great here but then why I had a downtime of more than 1 weak on my website bloggersutra.com
Now let’s go through the issue in detail!
Purchase of New Webhosting
Everyone wants to save money and so I am. I thought of migrating my wordpress website to new server on the very last day of my previous hosting getting expired.
Since I already had words with Bluehost support team, I was sure that I will move wordpress site to new server successfully causing no downtime.
But my thoughts came as a nightmare when I uploaded the backup from previous hosting provider to Bluehost. Everything was great till this time.
I had changed the nameserver for my domain name pointing to the new hosting provider and I could access my website with an error message.
The website has some issues with SSL certificate. The browser was displaying SSL certificate error for my website.
I tried to resolve the issue my self but after some time I could figure out that the issue is with the certificate installation.
Immediately I contacted the customer support of Bluehost and the assured me the issue will be resolved. They told me that they require to do fresh SSL certificate installation.
Finally, they did the fresh SSL certificate installation after my concern. I was told that it will take up to 3-4 hours for things to get stabilized.
After almost 6 hours I checked my website again and the issue was not resolved. After contacting their customer care again they again convinced me for fresh SSL certificate installation.
It was already 7 days and my website issue was still not resolved. I could see that it is affecting the ranking of my website, but things were not in my hand.
After almost 10 days I decided to get away with Bluehost and move wordpress site to new server. My search ended with hostinger.
Hostinger was kind enough to provide me the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal after it got over. I immediately purchased new web hosting and applied for the full refund from Bluehost.
On the very same day Bluehost processed my refund and within few days, I got my refund to my bank account.
I moved wordpress site to new server, hostinger without any issue and even they offered me free lifetime SSL certificate. There was no issue with the installation SSL certificate too.
My website was up and running again after almost 14 days. It was then I thought of writing hostinger tutorial that will help you start your own wordpress website.
Hostinger is offering almost 66% of for bloggersutra readers. Just click the link below to activate the offer.
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Also Checkout,
Take away – If you are planning to migrate your wordpress website to new server then don’t do it on the last movement, rather start the procedure at least one week in advance.
If at all you face any difficulty you can revert to the previous hosting and at least your website will have only limited downtime.
Backup of Website
Most of us rely on the website backup option offered by our hosting provider. Of course, it is also the good option for keeping your website backup ready in case of contingency.
I will personally recommend you to use some external wordpress plugin for taking real time backup for your website. I would, in fact, recommend Blogvault realtime backup plugin which is being used by me too.
Blogvault is offering a special discount of flat 30% for bloggersutra readers. To get the dicount just click the link below and discount will be applied automatically to your purchase.
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Please go through blogvault review before purchasing it.
Https Issue With Bluehost
As I had already mentioned earlier that the reason for downtime for my website was just the improper installation of SSL certificate by Bluehost technical team.
Just support this statement I have taken few of the screenshot of my conversation with Bluehost technical staff.
Bluehost is among the most popular and well-known hosting provider. This article is to make our readers understand the importance of website migration and the things to keep in mind while doing that.
We also recommend Bluehost to our readers. If you are interested in starting your first blog with Bluehost then take a look at How to start your blog with Bluehost tutorial.
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Recommendations
- Start your WordPress website migration process at least one week in advance.
- Always buy wordpress hosting, plugins and themes during black Friday and Cyber Monday deal to avail huge discount.
- Make use of third-party real time backup plugin like blogvault to take backup of your website and directly migrating your backup to new server from blogvault dashboard only.
- Always download your backup offline at least once in a week.
- Secure your website with wordpress security plugin. (check out: Malcare review – Best WordPress security plugin)
Also Read,
Wrapping Up
I don’t think migrating your wordpress website to new server or hosting provider is a difficult task. However, one must be clever to decide the time and the workflow to carry out the website migration.
We will always recommend you to use third-party real time backup plugins like Blogvault and wordpress security plugins like malcare to protect your website data and backup.
Try and migrate with the help of real-time backup plugins rather than doing it manually. Using the technical expertise of your hosting provider for migration is also advisable.
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