Whether you’re looking for a better hosting service, faster load times, or a more secure website, migrating your website to CloudWays hosting service for your WordPress site can be significant. This article will guide you through two different methods.
The current article is "4.9. Migrating to CloudWays" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
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If you don’t have any other website and don’t need to migrate, you can skip this step and continue to the next article.
Before We Begin
Before we delve into how to migrate a website to CloudWays hosting, there are a couple of prerequisites. First, you must ensure you’ve upgraded your CloudWays account (not trial) and set up a payment method. While the first migration is free, any subsequent migrations come at a cost, depending on your application. For more details, visit the CloudWays application migration help page.
Migrate a Website to CloudWays Hosting Method 1: Using the Application Migration CloudWays Add-on
You’ll need the Application Migration add-on to use SSH, SFTP, and cPanel methods.
Login to your CloudWays account.
On the top menu, find the icon that looks like a “Nine Square 3 x 3” grid, located right next to [Projects].
Click on [Add-ons].
On the new page, navigate to the [Application Migration] add-on.
Click the “Edit” pencil button on the right to open the “Application Migration Request” window.
If using a free account, click the “upgrade your account” link. You will see a prompt to input a credit card.
Fill in all the necessary details.
Migrate a Website to CloudWays Hosting Method 2: Using CloudWays WordPress Migrator Plugin
For this method, you must install the CloudWays migration plugin on your current WordPress installation. But first, we will get the target hosting information from the CloudWays account.
Login to your CloudWays account.
On the top menu, click on [Servers].
Click your server’s “WWW” symbol on the opened page, select your application, and keep the page open on the [Access Details] tab. We will leave this page open as we need information from it in the following steps.
Go to your source installation WordPress Admin and install the CloudWays WordPress Migrator plugin.
You can read more in the CloudWays WordPress Migrator plugin article.
The full name of the plugin is Cloudways WordPress Migrator By Cloudways.
Activate the plugin after installation.
Navigate to wp-admin, and click [Cloudways Migrate] on the left menu.
Provide the email that you registered with CloudWays.
Agree to the terms and conditions, then click [MIGRATE].
Next in How to Migrate a Website to CloudWays Hosting guide:
The following section will ask you to fill in some details from the Application page that you opened earlier:
Destination Site URL: Paste the “APPLICATION URL” from your CloudWays account. You can [Launch App] to open the link in a new tab to make copying easier. Example: https://wordpress-####-####.cloudwaysapps.com/.
SFTP Host/Server Address: From “Application Credentials,” copy and paste the “Public IP” into this field.
Database Name: From “MYSQL ACCESS,” copy and paste the “DB Name” into this field.
Now, return to your CloudWays account to fetch the SFTP information.
Click [Servers] on the top left menu.
Click on the name of your server, which might be something like “WordPress Server 1”.
SFTP Username: From “MASTER CREDENTIALS,” copy and paste the “Username.”
SFTP Password: From “MASTER CREDENTIALS,” copy and paste the “Password.”
Next in How to Migrate a Website to CloudWays Hosting guide:
You’ll need to answer a couple of questions:
HTTP Auth enabled? If you haven’t set up a password to visit your CloudWays-hosted application, select “No.” If your CloudWays-hosted site is password-protected, choose “Yes,” filling in the username and password.
Any root directories you want to migrate? If you have custom non-WordPress directories in the “public_html” directory that you want to migrate, select “Yes.” If you don’t want to migrate custom directories, select “No.” Suppose your site has been operating for a few years and has many plugins with custom data. In that case, the plugins can save their data in different folders outside the “plugins” directory. Then, you should select “Yes.”
Is this site password-protected? If your current website on another host isn’t restricted or password-protected, select “No.” If password-protected, select “Yes” and enter the username and password.
Finally, click [MIGRATE]. The migration process will begin. The duration depends on the size of your site, so be patient and let the plugin do its job.
Once the process ends, your WordPress site’s migration to CloudWays also ends.
The current article is "4.9. Migrating to CloudWays" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
Previous Article: 4.8. How to Buy Hosting. Next Article: 4.10. Up/Downscale Server
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