Easily Backup and Move Your Site

Backing up your work is a must, and it's something that can be done in a matter of minutes. And moving your site may become a necessity as you grow your business. Below are a few steps you can take to protect your business. If you're not willing to look out for yourself today, don't look to blame someone else tomorrow.

First of all, I've stressed in other posts and comments how vitally important it is to use plugins that are updated regularly and tested with the current version of WordPress, which is 4.9.3 at this writing (*Updated 2/6/18*). If you are using a plugin that is not updated, you are asking for trouble.

I know that some people here have advocated using WP Clone. But that plugin has not been updated in more than a year and, as such, is an ugly old dog that I would not pet. I have recently needed to migrate sites to another hosting company, and I've used a plugin to perform backups and successfully move the sites.

All-in-One WP Migration is authored by ServMask and offers 1-click functionality to backup, export and import site files. You can check it out at the WP Repository at https://wordpress.org/plugins/...

Backup your site at the touch of a button. You can see in this image below that all you have to do is click the Backup button in the WP Dashboard. Then select Create Backup and Save the File to your computer.

It's a similar process for moving, or migrating a site. You can see in this image below that all you have to do is click the Export button. Then select Export to File and Save the File to your computer.

If you're moving the site to a new hosting company, as I recently did, you'll need to go to the current domain registrar and change the DNS. For the past 12+ years, I've purchased all of my domains from NameCheap because I can host the sites wherever I want. I pay $12 per year to renew my sites there as well. So, like Flavor Flav said back in his Public Enemy days, don't believe the hype. :-)

So I went to NameCheap, changed the DNS, and then logged into my new hosting provider. I added the domain name - in this case it's Surfside Sandbox - and then I installed WordPress. It usually takes a couple of hours for the DNS to change, so I went out to lunch with my dad.

When I got back, I logged into my new WP Dashboard and installed and activated the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. You can see in this image below that all you have to do is click the Import button.

This plugin is especially sweet because of the 1-click and Drag and Drop features. You can see in the image below that while the Import window was open, all I needed to do was locate the folder where I placed the Backup/Migrate file. And then I just dragged it into the Import box.

Within minutes, my new site was up and running, and looked exactly like my original. Of course, you'll want to make sure that your plugins and permalinks are updated, and take a walk through of everything, but you'll find this method to be very simple and secure in backing up and moving your sites. Peace friends! :-)