How to Easily Transfer WordPress Website to a New Domain?

Oct 13, 2020

Are you interested in transferring your word press website to another domain? If yes, then you are in the right place. It is a very critical task and needs to be done carefully. Here we are sharing some easy steps to transfer a WordPress website without losing any SEO.

Before moving forward, keep in mind that Google ranking will be affected for some duration. But it is normal and soon search engines will adjust with new websites/domains.
Steps to move to a new domain

Create a Website Duplicator

Save all the Website data and information that is to be transferred. For this purpose, many free WordPress plugins are available in the market. One of them is the Duplicator Plugin. Go to plugins and install this plugin. After activation, you will see a duplicator menu in the sidebar. Click it and then click on the “Create New” option to make a duplicate. Later, click the “Next” button to continue. Duplicator will run and all the items will be checked and marked “Good”. Then click on the “Build” button to proceed further. This will take some time, depending upon the size of the website. After the completion, click on the “One-Click Downloader” option to save the backup on your computer.

Create a database
 

You need to create the database so that you can unpack your old website to the new domain. For this purpose, go to the hosting Cpanel and click databases. After that, click on the “MySQL Databases” icon. The next step is to provide a name to your database and proceed next. Now, Cpanel will create a new database for you. Scroll down to MySQL Databases, and add username and password, and click create a new user.

The new user will still have no access to the database. To do so, go to the “Add User to Database” section and select the database that you have created and click add. 

Unpack Database

The next step is to upload the database created earlier. Using FTP clients, you can easily connect your domain. The website directory needs to be empty. Now you can upload the archive and installer files to the root directory. Now you can unpack your website.
Open the link, http://yournewdomain.com/installer.php

Replace yourdomainname.com with the name of your new website. The duplicator migration wizard will appear on the screen. Check the term and condition box and proceed next. Add the database information and move next. The duplicator plugin will unpack your website database. Once, the migration is finished, you can go access the website through the admin login link.

301 Redirect

This is an important step as it will redirect your old site to the new domain. When anyone will land on your old site, it will redirect it to the new one. Using FTP and editing the .htaccess file connect your old site. 

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mynewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Make sure to replace mynewdomain.com with the new domain in the mentioned code. Also, change your domain name in Google Search Console for maintaining the SEO rankings.
 
If you are unable to migrate a WordPress website to a new domain, you can always consult with Serversea Hosting providers to do it for you!