What is most efficient way to migrate wordpress website?

Question

There are following ways to migrate a WP website: 1. Via FTP, download all files under public_html and export full database to local computer, and then upload the two to client's shared hosting server. 2. Migrate via plugin, but it doesn't always work, or I may not be using the right plugin. 3. Install another fresh installation (from wordpress.org) of Wordpress at client's shared hosting and move the exported database and wp-content folder to client's server.

I want to know the quickest, most efficient and userfriendly way, that saves bandwidth (means less size of movable data), to migrate the wordpress website to client's folder.

Also if somebody can suggest me the best plugin to do so. I'd prefer to do it by moving database and wp-content folder only, is it the right way to migrate Wordpress website?

Answer 1

I use All-in-one WP Migration. It handles the database search/replace automatically, and lets you specify what parts of the site to export.

Upload can be troublesome sometimes, but if you ftp the .wpress file to /wp-content/ai1wm-backups/ you can import from the backup instead of uploading through the plugin interface.

Answer 2

I do the transfer with below steps-

1. First zip the wp-content folder or directory and download it.
2. Then backup the database.
3. After backing up the database, download the database after cleaning the WordPress serialized data. I use this tool. And it works pretty well. You can also do that after downloading the database with any text editor. But the first way is pretty safe cause WordPress saves many serialized data in database.
4. Then install fresh copy of WordPress in your new server with a fresh database.
5. Then replace the new installation wp-content folder with your previously downloaded one.
6. After that delete all the table from new database and import the downloaded database. May be some time you also will be needed to delete the new database then create another one with the same name and downloaded database SQL file. But it depends how you downloaded the database.
7. Lastly you need login to the wp-admin, then have to go to Settings >> Permalinks and then have to hit Save Changes. It will re-generate your .htaccess file.

Answer 3

By my experience, and I tried all of mentoined plugins here an couple more - BackupBuddy is far more the best on market. That is my personal experience.