Transferred a Website Here: It Went Well
I decided to transfer one of my existing websites here to be hosted at WA. It's a fairly small Wordpress site and I first spent some time cleaning it up. I put GeneratePress theme on it and removed the old clunkier one. I got rid of a bunch of plugins I didn't really need. Then I went through the posts and pages, reading or at least skimming for things to improve. I had had an Amazon plugin which I got rid of, taking advice from the training here. I got links to replace some of the old ones, using Sitestripe at Amazon.com. Also following the training here, I used relatively few links out.
I found help in a useful video here:
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/the-easiest-way-to-move-your-site-to-wealthy-affiliate
It recommends a free plugin called All in One WP Migration, so I got that and with it made a complete copy of my old site.
Next I went to name.com, the domain name registrar where my site happened to be listed. I changed my site so it pointed to the servers here. Then I went to the websites part of my WA and paid to bring the domain name registration here. Good price, considering all its features.
It would have transferred faster if I hadn't made an absent-minded mistake but anyway today it showed up in my list of sites. Yay! So then WA quickly installed Wordpress at my request and there was a login. I used it, and once inside I went and got that same migration plugin, and installed it.
Uh oh..
When I tried to upload the file from my hard drive that had all my work on the site, it was too big to just upload. But there were instructions for what to do, for sites smaller than 512kb, which this one was... it was about 93kb. I had to download another free plugin, one in a zip format, and once it was in place, everything was smooth.
My file uploaded, and as it warned me, it wrote over everything WA had just installed.
I got into my site with my old username (I never use admin, a bit too paranoid, why give the bad guys that much of what they would need?) and password and handily, WA accepted that too. So now I can get into the backend of the wordpress site from my list of sites here in WA.
Then I went over every page and post. It was all just as it had been before. Yay!
(If you want to see the site, go to my profile page and it's the one that starts with Z on my list of links. I'm very pleased with how fast it loads.)
I will be transferring more sites bit by bit. Glad this went so well and it's loading so fast. Love how easy it is to go to https here as well.
Recent Comments
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Hi Rosana.
Wow, that's motoring some for a non-professional. (If that doesn't make me sound condescending–I don't mean to be.)
I will point out that if you are moving sites around, or changing themes and such, you probably have lost your Google Analytics watchamacallit (as someone has just noted). You'll have to set it up again. File this under: #JustSaying.
Regards,
Yes, I will, and there was something else I thought of that I will need to do... what was it? Oh well, I will do GA and the other will come back to me.Thanks for reminding me, Tayo!
That's a really useful write-up of the process...I sometimes wonder about changing a theme...as you said, maybe look at creating some form of backup in case it goes 'pear-shaped' Thank you.
My blog post about GeneratePress, just a couple down the list from this one, is about this site and the stats for changing themes were fabulous.
I've just read though, thank you. I have another domain (or two, maybe three or four,possibly five..) without themes,so I might go with one of those from the start rather than changing an established one.
Glad it worked out for you. Thanks for sharing with us your experience with transferring your existing website to WA. Awesome.
Good Job .. and Good description of the process - end-to-end
I am going to be moving a couple sites here in the not too distant future.
Thank You M'Friend
Joe
So glad it went through! I am such a chicken...I think I should change my cat theme but am afraid to do it. Just a coward...
Figure out a way to be able to get back to what you had in the first place, Fran,and then you might do it...
The video actually explained the bit after I say uh oh. Forgot that as I'd watched it a week or more ago.
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Thanks for this informative post.
You did a nice work!
Have a great day!
Ingrid