WordPress Migration Doesn’t Have to Be Hard. Follow These 9 Tips

#1 Define the Purpose, Scope of Work and Processes at First

You should create the site migration plan taking into account the main tasks, time constraints, amount of work and available resources. This is an important step as the main business tasks and necessary resources cannot be adequately defined in a short time span. Problems can arise during the site migration process.

It is very important to have enough time at your disposal otherwise, you will have to work day and night to complete your assignment, thus giving birth to faulty websites. Always keep in mind that each online resource requires an individual approach. Previous success does not guarantee that the upcoming website transfer will be successful. Follow your own experiences during website migration to stop a sharp decline in website traffic and business opportunities.

Always keep in mind that how active and organized you are, everything can wrong. Website migration process should take place at the right time. For example- If you are migrating a retail site, don’t take any risk for a couple of months before Christmas. Wait until January when everything will be very quiet. If the site belongs to the tourism sector, the spring and summer months should be avoided when most of the traffic and revenues come at your way.

#2 Perform Essential Actions on Old Site

There are several types of website transfer which depends on what things need to be changed, such as Hosting/IP Addresses, Domain name, URL structure, Site architecture, Content, Design. You have to be careful when a website undergoes a radical change in the URL structure, the site architecture and content changes.

Use a tool study and make sure that redirects are currently defined in advance in order to avoid chain redirection later. Explore All scanned addresses and process them in Excel later. These configurations are recommended because the number of concurrent threads is very low to avoid timeouts, a high value of maximum depth allows you to deeply bypass the site and capture existing redirects.

#3 Use Plugins for Website Backup

Every web developer should take care of website and its important data. He/she should take its backup as soon as possible. Many hosting companies take care of website backup. But you shouldn’t rely on it. If your goal is to not to lose traffic white transferring a site from one server to another, then it should be completely identical to the old site. Use a backup plugin to take the website backup in an easy way.

── index.php

├── license.txt

├── readme.html

├── wp-activate.php

├── wp-admin

├── wp-blog-header.php

├── wp-comments-post.php

├── wp-config-sample.php

├── wp-config.php

├── wp-content

├── wp-cron.php

├── wp-includes

├── wp-links-opml.php

├── wp-load.php

├── wp-login.php

├── wp-mail.php

├── wp-settings.php

├── wp-signup.php

├── wp-trackback.php

└── xmlrpc.php

(WordPress Files That you should backup).

Related Article: Top 10 WordPress Migration Plugins

#4 Optimize the Website Database very well

You must keep in mind that WordPress is a content management system based on relational databases. If the database is large, then it can make your site slow and affect its performance negatively. Therefore, before conducting the website migration process, create and optimize website database very well. Delete unnecessary files that are no longer required on the new site. Use database which helps users find the desired info easily on a new site. If possible, optimize your keywords also so that your website database can show the exact matching results to users in quick time.

#5 Use FTP for File Transfer

The FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is designed for direct file exchange. With its help, swift interaction takes place between the client and the server. A client is one who sends requests to a specific server and also receives and transmits information. A server is a system that receives files from a client, processes them, and then transfers them further.

So, the FTP service is designed to receive and transmit all kinds of files. It has its own servers which can store large archives with all sorts of data and files. The FTP gives you the ability to transfer data through the global network, download practically any files to a computer: music, archives, text information and program, remotely manage files on the server of any computer connected to the network and complete the website migration process comfortably.

#6 Enable HTTP Keep-Alive Setting

During the site migration process, when a visitor requests a file from the server, each file is sent individually. The problem here is that that a new link is opened for each file, which results in slow loading speed of the site depending on how many people simultaneously land on it each moment. If HTTP Keep-Alive setting is enabled, visitors’ browsers deliver all files through one link. So, the total number of open connections on the server is reduced. It doesn’t affect website traffic during the migration process.

#7 Enable GZIP Compression via mod_deflate

Website migration becomes a headache for many web designers and developers if they have to move lots of materials. The efficiency of your website will increase tremendously if you compress files and reduce their size. GZIP Compression helps you to compress the page files in Zip format, transfer it entirely to visitors and optimize the download speed. So, to do so, use the http module of the Apache server mod_deflate. In this way, web page traffic remains the same and your page loads fast on a new server.

#8 Mapping Redirect URLs

During the website migration process, the URLs between the old and new sites must be matched. There is nothing to worry about for those pages where the URL remains the same provided that the size of the content on the new page has not been significantly changed or reduced.

It demands a lot of attention otherwise everything can go wrong. Depending on the size of assignment, the URL transfer process can be done manually, but it consumes a lot of time. It can be done automatically to speed up the process.

All unique, useful and reliable pages (URLs) of the old site should be redirected to pages with the same or very relevant content on the new site with the help of 301 redirects. Make sure that redirects are implemented using 301 redirects that leads from the old to the new page.

The use of 302 (temporary) redirects is not recommended because search engines treat them inconsistently and do not pass through the link in the most case. This leads to a sharp drop in the rating.

If you accidentally transfer only a part of the addresses, you can jeopardize the authority of the new domain as a whole and search engine may treat it as a weaker domain. So, redirection lists should be optimized for optimal performance. Since redirects are loaded into the memory of the web server, a large number of redirections can have a negative impact on performance.

#9 Use A Reliable Hosting for New Website

For wordpress migration to new server, if you choose a low-quality server then you will face many problems. With regular analysis and research of web hosts, many web designers have encountered problems in the server configuration and declared the site loading speed as insufficient.

So, review different hosting companies available on the market & choose one with excellent speed, enough bandwidth, protection against the different types of online security threats. This will help in website migration and ensure the optimal performance of the new site. Thus step also minimizes headaches involved in making wordpress migration to new host.

A reliable website like BlueHost is strongly recommended.

#10 WordPress Migration Tool – Use A Plugin for Site Migration

We all know that the manual process to migrate WordPress website takes a lot of time and the chances of mistakes are always higher. It can dilute the performance of a new website. So, to complete the site migration process without any error, you should use the best WordPress migration plugins. Based on the input, the plugin automatically migrates your WordPress site with the database, media files, plugins, content, etc. You don’t need to get familiar with different technical terms while migrating the WordPress site from one server to another using a plugin.