Consolidating your hosting accounts

In the interest of full disclosure. I am an affiliate of GoDaddy.com and get paid by them for referrals my site makes to their services. All other ads on my sites might pay me commissions also. Now, if you’re like me you have accumulated more than one web site. I’ve racked up around 20 domains most of which are built on Wordpress. I use WP for my blog sites but also for my commercial sites. I adapt ‘posts’ to be new product offers. It’s a great way to easily add, remove and manage data. In the course of getting to this stage I had accumulated several ‘free’ hosting accounts but also an unlimited hosting package at GoDaddy. If you intend to have multiple sites the unlimited hosting is a great way to go. My problem arose when it came time for my ‘free’ economy hosting to renew. I didn’t want to pay for the separate economy packages when everything could be hosted in my unlimited account. The trick? How could I migrate the contents of the sites I had on my other accounts into the unlimited account? Luckily, all my sites are at GoDaddy. If your sites are spread out this will work but will be a little more complicated. This is a fairly advanced process and if you make an error you could lose your blog data. Proceed at your own risk.

One thing to be aware of is that simply copying the contents of your site through FTP is not going to work. WP is database drive and that database needs to be copied correctly. The first thing to do is to load a Wordpress database backup plugin to your blog. Also, you’ll need FTP access to your sites. We’ll refer to the unlimited account as ‘Main’ and the site you’re moving as ‘OLD’. Go through the process of doing a backup of your database according to the plugin instructions. Be sure you save the resulting file to your local hard drive since you may not have access to the ‘OLD’ directory. The file created by the backup program will probably be compressed as either a gz or TAR file type. Once the file is on your local drive unzip it using 7Zip or a similar program. Now, in your FTP program (I use FileZilla) you need to log into the ‘OLD’ host account. Navaigate to the folder on your local machine where you saved the backup file. On the hosted side highlight the ‘wordpress’ folder the folder where Wordpress was installed. (When installing Wordpress I always change the default folder location to ‘blog’ rather than ‘Wordpress’. ) Drag that folder over to the local folder where your backup is located. This will take a few minutes to copy but it’s worth it. You will now have all of your plugins, themes and other data saved locally. While in the FTP program, navigate to the ‘Main’ hosting account. Under the root directory create the folder where your ‘OLD’ site data will reside. I always make the folder relevant to the domain name. You can usually create a directory by right clicking over the root folder. You’ll need this folder name later.

The next step is specific to GoDaddy, if your ‘OLD’ host account is elsewhere you’ll need to figure this step out for that provider. Go to the Hosting Manager. Choose to manage the ‘OLD’ hosting account. Click the tab labeled ‘Domains’. You should now see the domain you want to relocate. You need to add a domain to the list. Make it a fake domain (I use the name on my site with a 1 at the end. It will give you error saying that GoDaddy does not control this domain blah blah blah. Click okay, this fake domain will go away after we cancel the ‘OLD’ host account. (Please note that you are not buying the fake domain, just allowing the real domain to be removed from this account.) Highlight the new fake domain and choose the “Make Primary button”. This process will take up to 24 hours for GoDaddy to complete. Please note that when they make this change your site will be down until you get it set up in the new hosting account.

You can keep checking this page to see when the ‘changes pending’ message changes to ‘Setup’. Once the fake domain is listed as the domain for the ‘OLD’ hosting account we are ready to move on to setting up in our ‘Main’ host account.

Go back to Host Manager and choose the ‘Main’ hosting account. Choose the ‘Domain’ tab. Click the Add button located above the list of domains associated with the hosting account. Begin typing the ‘OLD’ domain name in the popup box. GoDaddy should populate the field with the available ‘OLD’ domain. Now tab over to the ‘folder’ space. Click the browse option. This will open a window that shows your ‘Main’ hosting folder. You should see the folder you created for the new residence for your site. Click that folder then click ok. Now we wait for GoDaddy to do their magic. It is usually done within the hour. Until its complete the ‘OLD’ domain appears in your list of domains with a notation like ‘pending’. When setup is complete that field will indicate that it is ‘setup’.

After they set up your domain you need to have them install Wordpress in the new domain. Go to Hosting Manager. Choose to manage your ‘Main’ host account. Now choose the ‘Applications’ tab. In the left column, choose ‘Blogs’. Then choose Worpress. Click the install button in the center panel of your screen. Place a check mark next to the domain name. You’ll have to choose several setup options then click okay. GoDaddy will then proceed to do the install. Usually it is done within an hour but sometimes takes longer. You will receive an email telling you the install is done.

Now for the restoration. The first thing I do is open the FTP program and open the ‘Main’ hosting location. Open the folder where the ‘OLD’ site resides. Open the folder where you told Godaddy to install Wordpress. This is ‘Wordpress’ by default. Now open the ‘WP-Content’ folder. Delete the ‘Plugins’, ‘Themes’ & ‘Uploads’ folders. There may not be an ‘Uploads’ folder. Now open the local folder where you saved your backups. Open the folders until you get to the WP-Content folder. Open it. Drag the ‘Plugins’, ‘Themes’, and ‘Uploads’ folders from the local window to the web site window. This will probably take a few minutes to complete. You are now ready do the real magic.

Go back to GoDaddy and open your Hosting Manager. Choose to manage the ‘Main’ hosting account. Click the ‘Database’ button. Choose the MySQL button. You’ll now need to identify the database that GoDaddy has just set up in your new ‘Main’ site. Usually it will be the last one on the list. Copy the file name before you click on it. You’ll need to paste it in the user id to log into the database. The password is the password you set up when you had GoDaddy create your Wordpress install. Once inside the dtatbase manager you need to choose to ‘Import’. This will open a dialogue box. Browse to the location where you saved the database backup file. Be careful to choose the file you unzipped. Hold your mouse over the file. It should be file type SQL not GZ or TAR. Choose the SQL file and click the button to allow the import. This is a fairly quick operation depending on how large your blog database is.

Now you are ready to go. Try navigating to your blog. It should open. (Please note that if you had your old blog set up to open from the root domain while WP is installed in a folder you will need to move your index.php file to the root and edit the require statement in that file.) You may need to check your plugins. In some cases the plugins have not been activated. I’ve had to go through and activate the plugins. In another case the plugins activated when the database was restored. I assume it is a function of the theme or something. Hope this helps.