Migrating a site to a EE server

v3
#1

Hi guys,

What is the best way to move a site from existing non EE-server to an EE server. Since you cannot move the DNS over until the migration is done it is difficult to do it on the domain – to explain a bit better:

current non-ee site = mysite.com new EE site also = mysite.com

You cannot move over the DNS of the non EE-site until migration is done but you can also not access the new EE site until migration of DNS is done.

Maybe deploy a site like staging.mysite.com and then migrating over from there?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards franwess

#2

May I ask what type of site, the live version of mysite.com is? Is it a WordPress website?

#3

Hi there,

Sorry yes, it is WP – for an existing site of our that we want to migrate form old to new server under EE.

Regards franwess

#4

I did this not long ago. Obvious disclaimers apply, but I’ll give you the basics of what I did.

  1. It should go without saying, first & foremost, back your LIVE site up - everything (Files & DB)! I don’t think you can have too many back-ups, so back your LIVE site up multiple times, if you want.
  2. On your new server, go ahead with the EE installation process, using the live domain name.
  3. Install WordPress on your new EE server, using as similar of a configuration as the live WP site, you wish to move. As long as there aren’t any firewall issues, you should be able to access this new WP site, using the IP Address of your new EE server.
  4. Copy the wp-content directory from your live site, to your new EE server, replacing the wp-content directory for the new WP installation you completed in Step 3.
  5. Export the database of your live site, as a .CSV file.
  6. Make note of the database name, from your new EE server.
  7. DROP the database, from your new EE server.
  8. Create a new database, on your new EE server, using the name you noted in Step 6.
  9. Import the .CSV file from Step 5.
  10. As long as there aren’t any firewall issues, you should be able to access this new WP site, using the IP Address of your new EE server, and it should display as your old site, from your old server does.
  11. Change DNS to reflect new EE server’s IP Address, to take new site LIVE.

There are many other people with more EE experience in this community forum, that may have a more complete, less confusing set of steps. At the very least, maybe someone else could weigh in on what I’ve provided you. However, I can tell you, these are the steps I followed, and I came out just fine :wink:

2 Likes
#5

@bamajr: Thanks for the reply. This looks like it could work. One question though – how do you access your site on the IP address on a EE server?

Regards frannwess

#6

Check out the instructions by @miteshshah here: Access website via IP address only? - They should get you where you want to be (operative word there being “should”).

#7

@bamajr: Thank you very much!

Regards franwess

#8

The way I work on a new setup of a live site is to edit my host file. Here is a small tutorial on how to access and edit your host file. It’s pretty fast and simple and it forces your computer to point to a different IP Address for the given URL till you remove or comment out the change. After you have setup the site and are happy with everything you can then update your DNS records, comment out the changes to your host file, and after the DNS record has updated see the newly created live site.

#9

any reason why you’d choose CVS instead of sql dump?

#10

I like a fresh (new) database when I migrate. I don’t want to migrate in any problems which may not be known, but are stored in the database. In reality, this is just my preference.

1 Like
#11

thank you guys!

#12