How to migrate a WordPress Site

This post explains how to migrate a WordPress site from an old location to a new one.

Post Series “Introduction to WordPress”

This post it is just one within in a series of posts that want to be an introduction to WordPress.

Please read the post “Introduction to WordPress” to find an index of all posts within the series, in case you are interested or need more background about the topics covered on this post.

Steps on how to migrate a WordPress Site

Steps:

Export pages from old WordPress site
Import pages to new WordPress site
Announce the Migration on the old Site
Redirect Pages

These steps are detailed in the next sections.

Export Pages from old WordPress Site

From the old WordPress site, go to Tools > Export. Export the old site content to an XML file.

Import Pages to new WordPress Site

From the new WordPress site, go to Tools > Import. Import the old site content from an XML file.

Announce the Migration on the old Site

This step only applies if you are changing the domain.

Write a small post or page and place it on the front of your old site to announce that you moved to a different location

Redirect Pages

This step only applies if you are changing the domain, from an old site to a new site.

It is convenient that all the old posts redirect to the new domain, and there are different methods to achieve it. Admin privileges are required to apply any of these methods. In case you are not the admin, you should try to contact them.

The first method means to modify old WordPress htaccess file. This is the cleanest way to update search providers. Only admins have access to htaccess file, so if you are not the admin of the old site you may need to contact them.

You may want to add a 301 redirect, that tells search engines that page has permanently moved to the new location.

The second method is to use a WordPress plugins for URL redirection management. One of the most popular is Redirection, and another one is Simple Website Redirect.