Recently I had to move several WordPress blogs from one host to another and I wanted to do it without disrupting service to our customers. We were using Host A and were not very happy with the service and downtime. Our customers blogs were getting hacked at a crazy rate. We secured a better quality host at Host B. Now the trick was to replicate the blog on Host B before moving the domain name over. When moving domain names it can take up to 48 hours for the change to propagate throughout the internet. By creating a duplicate blog on Host B, it would not matter when the propagation took place because both blogs were identical. Once the domain had completed its propagation, I could close out the old blog on Host A and no one would be interrupted.

I ran into some snags, but found Rob Cubbon’s blog with a solution to a problem that had arisen from this process. When I reinstalled the blog and database, I got a 404 error. Internal links within the blog were pointing to the old domain name. This was a problem because I wanted to make sure that the new blog was working completely before moving the domain name. In the video below, Rob shares how he did this:

The real trick was adding the following code to the wp_config.php file:

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.wpblogtalk.com’);
define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://www.wpblogtalk.com’);

Of course the link in each line gets replaced with your new temporary URL on your new (Host B) account. Additionally, Rob mentioned the search and replace plugin to help find any hidden links that link back to the original blog on Host A.

For understanding how to backup and replace all your WordPress files, check out govnrDOTcom’s tutorial video on backing up and replacing your files and database. He does a great job of showing how simple it can be to restore a WordPress blog. Additionally, make sure to use the backupwordpress plugin to make a daily backup and save it to a file, email it somewhere, or archive it in another location. It works great and will save your butt in a jam.

Hope you found this helpful, let me know your thoughts.