How To Move A Joomla Site To A New Server Hosting Company

There could be several reasons for a business to have considered moving their Joomla site to either a new hosting provider or to a new server.

Why consider moving?

Joomla undoubtedly is an extremely flexible and popular CMS but can become a complicated affair and effect the performance if the web server is not optimized properly. Excessive use of templates or extensions also can slow down a website Since the performance is bad many of the website owners deliberate moving their Joomla site from their current Joomla hosting provider to another provider.

Businesses also consider moving to another server when there is no scope of upgrade. Joomla developers are frequently providing updates to the software using latest technologies which in turn requires the higher versions of PHP and MySQL. Hosting companies need to update their servers but they hesitate especially if the server is a shared server with multiple non Joomla users on it.

You need to implement the following steps to transfer your Joomla site to a new server or hosting provider.

Select a new reliable Joomla hosting provider like Go4Hosting.

Backup your Joomla website:

Take a cloud backup of all the existing Joomla site’s files and database. Login to the control panel. Go to the File Manager icon and move to the folder where your website’s files are located. Create a .zip file and compress the files into it and save it on your computer system.

For backup to the database you will have taccess phpMyadmin. Go to the phpMyadmin icon in the control panel. Find your databases and if there are any doubts it can be easily found from the website’s configuration.php file. Look for public$db= “yourdatabase”. Select the database, export all the tables and save it on your computer. For easier management, you can save the database on the same zip folder where your website files are saved.

Transfer files and database:

Once the backup is completely done, you will have to upload them to your new server. You will need to connect to your new server via FTP and drag the files from the saved zip folder on to your new hosting public_html folder. Your FTP details can be found by logging into your existing account. Click on ‘manage web hosting’ and go to ‘load extend control panel’. Once the loading is done, look out for a box ‘unlock FTP’ and click on it. You can find your FTP client and the server user name and password. Note them down. In case you are migrating to a new hosting company ask them for the new FTP details.

Double click on public_html or similar folder in the new hosting provider. Upload all the files that you had downloaded and saved from your earlier host. Check for any error reports and repeat the process if any error is found. One done, the upload is completed.

Update domain name servers:

Your new server is ready with a working Joomla site. But your domain name still loads the old server and you need to update the domain name to point it to your new Joomla hosting company. You will have to contact your domain name provider and get the name servers updated to your new host. Another process is to order for a domain transfer to the company you are hosting with. The name servers are automatically updated. In case the domain name is registered with the hosting company you are moving away from, you could consider transferring it to another independent registrar. This process may take a few days. The name servers update may take up to 48 hours and once it is done you can view your website on the new servers.

Upload the configuration.php file to your new website’s root directory public_html. Use your browser and visit <your domain>/path.php. You will get a message of what your full path is and what your log_path and tmp_path should be.

Edit your configuration.php file:

Open the configuration.php file and modify the log_path and tmp_path to your new server settings. Save the file and upload it. Your Joomla transfer is successfully completed.

Test your new site:

Once the name servers have been updated, and to ensure that the new Joomla website works perfectly you can do some random tests by accessing different pages using different functionalities of your website. Create a new post on your blog or forum if any, that you have moved to a new host and ask the community to report for any issues or errors.

If you have chosen Go4Hosting as your new Joomla host, their technical experts are always around to assist you in the process.