Elementor: How to migrate a WordPress website

In this article, you will learn how to migrate a WordPress website and your content with Elementor to a new host and/or a new domain.

This tutorial will help you if you want to:

changeweb host while maintaining the same domain.
modify the domain of your website while changingweb host
Move a website from your local or development server to a production server.

To help you find the solution that's right for you, we'll show you one method:

The Duplicator plugin - this free plugin makes the whole process easy and is a great option for most situations.

Ready to start migrer?

We'll start with an in-depth tutorial on migrating your website with the Duplicator plugin. Next, we'll cover the steps you need to take to do it manually.

How to migrate WordPress with the Duplicator plugin: step by step

The good thing about using the Duplicator plugin is that in addition to moving your website and database files for you, Duplicator can also handle general database serialization issues and can replace them. URL in your website database (if you also need to change your website domain name).

Step 0: Some preliminary housekeeping

Before you start, you will need to have a bit of basic knowledge.

First of all, always take a full backup of your site before migrating. Moving your site involves working with certain sensitive areas, so you always want to have a backup just in case.

Second, if you are moving your website to a new domain name, you should make sure that you have already changed the nameservers of the new domain to indicate the host to which you are migrating your website.

Third, make sure you have the credentials ofWeb hosting to which you want to migrate your website. You should be able to upload files to your server and create a new database.

Finally, go ahead and install and activate the free WordPress plugin Duplicator on the website you want to migrate. Discover our step-by-step guide on How to install a plugin in WordPress

Now let's get started.

Step 1: Create a new Duplicator package

Once you have installed and activated the free Duplicator plugin, you need to create a "Package", which is essentially a portable copy of your entire website.

To create a package, go to the tab Duplicator from your WordPress dashboard and choose Create New

On the next screen, you can leave the default values. Just click on the button Next :

Duplicator will then scan your website for potential issues and should hopefully come back with all "Good". If it finds any potential issues, you can expand the accordion tab to learn more.

One potential problem is the size of your website. If your website is particularly heavy ("over 2 GB on most budget hosts and over 10 GB on premium hosts", according to the Duplicator team), you may need to buy Duplicator Pro because it is best suited for large websites.

Assuming everything seems to be working perfectly, click the button Build to complete the process and create the package for your website:

Once this process is complete, which can take a while for larger websites, Duplicator will offer you two files to download:

An archive of zip files
A PHP file called installer.php

Download these two files to your computer and keep them handy as you will need them in the next steps:

Step 2: Create a new database with your new host

Next, you need to create a new empty database at the host you want to migrate WordPress to.

If you are using a web host with the cPanel, you can do so from the area MySQL Databases in the cPanel:

First, give your database a name:

Then once you have created the database create a new database user / password and then assign that user to the database you created:

Make sure you give the user full privileges and keep the database name, database user, and user password handy, as you'll need them soon:

Step 3: Upload the Duplicator files to the new host

Then use the FTP or cPanel File Manager to upload the two Duplicator files to the directory where you want your WordPress website to be migrated.

Remember, it should have a zip file and a file named installer.php.

Step 4: Launch the Duplicator Installer file to configure the website

Once you have downloaded these two files, you are ready to start the installation process to complete your migration.

If you are migrating your website to a new domain name, you can simply go to yournewdomain.com/installer.php (assuming you have already changed the domain names of the servers).

If you keep the same domain name, but just move your website to a new host, you won't be able to do this because your domain's name servers are likely still pointing to your previous host. A nice workaround here is to edit the file host from your computer. This allows you to force your computer to connect your domain to your new host, even before you change domain name servers.

Once you open the file installer.php, you should see a setup wizard that will take you through the process. Click on Next to begin :

After a short wait, while Duplicator checks out the files on your website, you will be prompted to enter the database credentials you created in step 2. After entering the credentials, click on Test Database to make sure it works:

If everything looks good, you can click Next to continue :

Duplicator will import your database, it will give you the possibility to update the data. This is an important consideration as this procedure will allow you to update the database URLs of your WordPress website to reflect any changes made to your domain name.

Duplicator should automatically detect any changes to your domain name and populate the fields accordingly. However, make sure the information in the URL field matches the domain you want to use on your new website:

Once you have verified that the information is correct, click Next.

Next, you should see an invitation to log into the admin area of the newly created website:

After logging in for the first time, Duplicator will automatically delete the migration files and clean everything up.

Step 5: Find and replace URLs in Elementor content (if changing the domain)

Although Duplicator handles URL replacement for most of your website content, you may need to replace URLs using Elementor's built-in tool if you have changed your website domain name. and that Elementor content does not work after migration.

Discover also: How to Create a Tabbed Gallery of Images with Elementor

To access this tool, go to Elementor → Tools. Then click on the tab Replace URL.

Enter your old domain name in the left box and your new domain name in the right box. Then click on Replace URL:

Step 6: Regenerate Elementor CSS Files

At this point, your website should be working. However, to absolutely make sure everything is working properly, you can finish things off by forcing Elementor to regenerate its CSS files.

To do this, go to Elementor → Tools And click Regenerate Files :

And that's all !

You'll still want to thoroughly test your website, but it should work exactly as it did before the migration process.

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Conclusion

Here is ! That's it for this guide. If you have comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to let us know in the reserved section.

However, you can also consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.

But meanwhile, share this article on your different social networks.

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Elementor: How to migrate a WordPress website