Transfer Your Joomla Website From One Host To Another

Ever wanted to shift your joomla site from one host to another better host? There are lots of thirdparty joomla extensions to transfer your joomla web contents, but the layout may remain same. You can transfer the joomla with your whole layout and widgets same as in previous host.

Backup your database

First you’ll need to backup your database from phpmyadmin. Go to your phpmyadmin from control panel. Then at the left sidebar, select the database your joomla is based on.

After you select the database, you’ll get list of tables.

At the right column, select on export tab.

In next page, under View dump (schema) of database, Export, click on select all.

Below this, you’ll have large options of formats available to export in. Choose SQL.

Under Save as File, give the filename and choose the compression method if you have larger size of database.

Then at the most right corner, click on GO button.

Then you’ll have a text format of the database.

Select all and copy it in Notepad. Save it as “database.txt” with Unicode formatting.

Now you have successfully backed up your data. Next you’ll be copying the core contents of the joomla site.

Copying the files to another host.

This is nothing harder; it is like just copying and pasting. Copy the contents from the source host and paste it to another host by using any FTP client favorable to you. You can also use windows inbuilt ftp client.

Since you are using joomla and using different host than previous one, delete the configuration.php file from the root of the webhost. Get the installation folder of the joomla version you were using and upload it to your new host again, as you might have deleted it from your previous host for security reasons.

Now we have the files ready.

Preparing for transfer.

Next, you’ll again login to phpmyadmin control panel and manually create a new database. To create a new database, in your phpmyadmin main page, type the database name exactly same that you had before.

Click on create button.

Installing again

To fix the host configuration, you’ll need to re-install joomla. Reinstalling joomla will create completely new website and you haven’t created any tables yet in your new database.

In your web browser browse to the main page and install it as usually with no sample data installed. Even though you install sample data, it doesn’t matter as you will be droping all the tables later.

After you the installation is complete, either rename or replace or remove installation folder. You’ll have new configuration.php in your root folder where joomla is installed.

Deleting the database

We installed joomla again only for the configuration.php. Now we won’t need the new tables created in this database. Therefore we’ll be removing it.

To remove all the tables, choose the database as before. In the right column at the end of the table list, click on Check All.

Now at in with selected dropdown list, select drop.

In next confirmation window, click on Yes button.

There you go, you’ve successfully cleared all the contents in your database. At the moment, your website won’t work, so better not browsing it.

Recovering your previous database

Again choose the database you’ve just emptied, at the right column choose import tab.

In next page, click on choose file and upload the backed up database. Before uploading make sure you’ve chosen the right format. We’ve saved database.txt in utf-8 format. Hence we must select utf-8 format in the dropdown list.

Leave rest of the things as default and click on Go button.

You’ll be notified if the database has been successfully uploaded.

Now you’ve successfully completed transferring your blog. You’ll see everything similar as before.

Note: You might have problem in administration page login if you have typed different username and password. The Username and Password that you used at the time of installation gets deleted. As you upload the backed up database, your previous administer username and password will be recovered instead. Therefore try logging in username and password as you had in your previous host.