How do I migrate an existing site?

Question

I have an existing Wordpress site hosted at InMotion and I’d like to switch hosting over to Digital Ocean.

I created a Wordpress droplet and followed these instructions:

https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/wordpress

I’ve managed to log into the server via SSH using root@use_your_droplet_ip

It says an interactive script will run, but I am not seeing that. I just get a command prompt and I can navigate around the server.

How do I trigger the interactive script?

Also, once I can get the setup script to run, should I still enter my domain name and proceed to Let’s Encrypt setup per the rest of the instruction, given I am migrating an existing blog that is already live at that URL? (I want to migrate the site and test it on DO before switching DNS over.) Maybe that can be done by adding a row to my hosts file.

Thanks

alexdo · Answer

Hey, @pierreville

The interactive script should start on your first login. It’s weird that the script is not starting once you’ve logged in.

I believe that this should not be an issue for you, since you have an existing WordPress site. You can simply install/configure Nginx/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LEMP or LAMP) and then just copy your files to the droplet and import your database.

If you’re not familiar with the process I can explain the steps which you’ll need to do.

Let me know if you have any questions.

KFSys · Answer

Hello

When talking about migrations, before you start migrating your websites you’ll need to configure everything else.

General

We have a series of tutorials that cover the process of migrating from one Linux server to another which you can check here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorial_series/how-to-migrate-to-a-new-linux-server

In general, depending on your site/application you will need to spin up a droplet that matches your current hosting provider environment or at least is suitable for your app/site needs (e.g running the same PHP version). Then you need to migrate your data (files, users, database and etc).

LAMP/LEMP setup

You can follow this tutorial for a LEMP setup: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-ubuntu-22-04

You can follow this tutorial for a LAMP setup: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-22-04

CMS(WordPress)

Additionally, if you are using WordPress as a CMS, you can use the WP All in One plugin or Duplicator to migrate all of your WordPress websites.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/

Direct Transfer

If you have to move some of the data manually you can do that via ssh using scp or rsync. Another option is to use an FTP client like FileZilla

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-copy-files-with-rsync-over-ssh

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/transfer-files/

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