I have been dreading and putting-off a migration off of GoDaddy for so long, because, well, migration of a WP site just plain sucks…
It never works right the first time around, especially when you have a multisite, and it’s even worse when want to switch from one domain name structure to another (in this case, initially from aarontgrogg.com to a test sub-domain installation at my new host, before being sure I wanted to make the change).
Then I stumbled upon Duplicator…
WOW!!!! Can this even be called a plug-in anymore? It’s like a full-blown software application! :-)
Basically, you install this plug-in on your current site. Activate it. Click one button to start the process. Click two buttons to download two files. Copy those files to your directory on the new host (this can, and probably should, happen before you install anything, no need to install WP on the new host). Browse the directory and click the “installer.php” file. Fill in a couple fields (your new DB Host Info). Click the “Install” button. Open a beer. Cause you’re done…
What happens in that tiny paragraph is Duplicator grabs all your files from your old host (WP, static, uploads, whatever you have in that directory (you can exclude entire directories or just single files and types)), all your database (even multisite), and all your Settings (!), and zips them into a single file (it also creates the installer.php file). Then on the new host, it unzips all that, sets up your new DB, sets all your Settings, and just fires up for you (you do have to refresh all your Permalinks, so yeah, one more click)…
Just freaking nuts!! When I think of the HOURS I have wasted in my life moving and fighting with WP migrations… it’s ridiculous… No host in their right mind should have a “one-click installation” if you are migrating, they should straight-up forbid you to use it and just tell you “Go get this plug-in and use it.”
(Full disclosure: I will say, however, I did have one tiny glitch, already reported in the plug-in’s forum, that for some reason it didn’t update my old domain name to my new (temp) domain name in two tables (wp_blogs and wp_site, which I believe are multisite-specific, so there). I had to manually go into phpMyAdmin and update those myself. But after that, it worked right away, no fuss, no guss, no (more) errors!)
Lovely sweetness…
Atg
PS: This would also make a fantastic Backup Plug-in, since it actually captures EVERYTHING about your site… It would be like a one-click Restore…