I am planning on migrating my WordPress hosting from GoDaddy to a WordPress droplet using the same domain name. I want to minimize downtime. How best do I do this?
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×Hi there @osoisi,
The process that you need to follow is:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-lamp-on-ubuntu-18-04
Or you could use the 1-Click installation here:
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/wordpress
After that, you need to backup your Wordpress files and Database from your GoDaddy account
Then using SFTP or SSH upload your Wordpress files and database to your DigitalOcean Droplet.
If you are using the 1-Click installation, you can delete the files from the /var/www/html folder and upload your files from GoDaddy to that folder.
Then you would have to create a new database and a username and import your Wordpress database that you’ve backed up from your GoDaddy account
After that make sure to update your wp-config file with the new database details
Then in order to avoid any downtime, you can test your site on your Droplet. To do that you can edit the hosts file on your PC to bypass the DNS lookup and access the site on our servers through your main domain.
This only affects your computer and your visitors will see the site as normal.
The location of the file is as follows:
Question
C:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
/etc/hosts
/etc/hosts
Just open it up in your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad) and add that line on the bottom:
- server_ip_address yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com
Once you have made the change, save the file and browse to your website as normal. Make sure to clear the cache of your browser.
You will see it served from your DigitalOcean Droplet and will be able to test the full functionality of your CMS before actually pointing your domain name to your DigitalOcean Droplet.
To view the site on your existing host, just remove the line from your hosts file.
So to summarize:
Let me know if you have any questions.
Hope that this helps!
Regards,
Bobby
Hey @bobbyiliev, great answer!
How is this procedure changing if the existing website has an SSL and the WordPress/web server is configured so it automatically redirects all HTTP traffic to HTTPS?
I have a similar situation, I did what you said (before reading your post, so I confirm that this should work) but it redirects to HTTPS and it fails (as my droplet does not have any HTTPS configured yet).
The domain name is hosted on Cloudflare (or any other DNS hosting company)
Current website is hosted to a shared Godaddy (or any other shared hosting company) hosting with SSL configured.
Current website has various domain name related services running (Ex. google analytics, google maps, etc)
New website will be hosted on DigitalOcean Droplet (ex IP: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX)
Provided that we follow your steps above, visiting the domain (ex. example.com) will fail as it’s going to redirect to https://example.com but the hosts file is pointing just to http://example.com.
How do I configure HTTPS on the droplet before pointing the A records to the droplet’s IP address?
Say we gain access to the admin@example.com email (customer will give it to us) and we try to issue a new SSL, will this invalidate the current SSL configured on the current hosting? [Remember, we try to have minimum downtime, so I don’t want something to happen to the current setup before changing the A records]
Can we generate and configure an SSL to the droplet even if the A records are not pointing to our droplet yet?
Do I need to perform “Search and replace” in the imported Database to replace https://example.com with http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX ?
Thank you in advance!
Hi @letscode
I have the same challenge, my site loads but not properly.
My guess is that it is only files that aren’t somehow requiring https. Also trying to access the wp-admin won’t even work at all.
I just want to know if you got any way to resolve this?
@collinsmbaka, I think that your problem is a little different than mine.
The problem in my case was a plugin redirecting all HTTP to HTTPS. Since I was migrating a WordPress site developed by another company I had to find out the hard way as they did not inform me properly.
In your case, you should use Search and replace (https://interconnectit.com/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/) and check if you have entries like http://yourdomain.com and replace them with https://yourdomain.com. Of course, you should backup your database before using this tool and also be very careful what you replace.
Okay, thanks for replying.
I didn’t need to search and replace, I just mapped my domain to my droplet and set up SSL and everything is working just fine.
I guess the reason it wasn’t loading properly was that most URLs were https://site.com/post1 and my host file was using http://site.com/post1 to make the requests.
Hi there,
In your case, I would definitely first install the SSL certificate on the new Droplet before changing the DNS settings.
As you already have an SSL certificate, you could download your certificate files like the certificate key, CA bundle, and the certificate itself and install the certificate on the new Droplet manually.
You can follow the steps on how to do that here:
Once you have the certificate installed, you can test the website as normal.
Hope that this helps.
Regards,
Bobby
Hello @osoisi,
This is quite easy to do, You can move your website on Digitalocean with any 1ms downtime. The first thing you have to do, Create a Droplet and Install either LEMP or LAMP whatever you like.
You can go here and collect the information about LAMP: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-lamp-on-ubuntu-18-04
Follow all the steps according to guide, but one thing you have to change is Virtual host configuration if you want to run a WordPress website.
You can make the configuration like this:
Replace example.com with your own domain.
<VirtualHost *:80>
# Admin email, Server Name (domain name), and any aliases
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
# Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com/public_html
<Directory /var/www/html/example.com/public_html>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
# Log file locations
LogLevel warn
ErrorLog /var/www/html/example.com/log/error.log
CustomLog /var/www/html/example.com/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Next, take a back up of your Database and Publichtml directory. Upload publichtml directory here: /var/www/html/example.com/
To manage the Database you can use Phpmyadmin: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-18-04
Upload your Database and connect with your website, Now you’re ready to live your website on digital ocean server.
Point your Domain to Droplet public IP.
If you’ll set up digital ocean DNS, then it may take some time to live.