How to migrate Wordpress Site from Hostgator to Bluehost manually?

What if the free migrating plugins you are using do not work at all,  or if all else fails, then your last resort would be migrating sites manually. Migrating WordPress site by hand requires a lot of effort and time, but for me this is the safest way to retrieve all your files without experiencing lots of problems. 

I'm not a programmer nor expert in Cpanel, but once you dedicate your time in "learning by doing", all other difficult things become easy. I'll share with you how I migrate WordPress site with less headaches.


Here's how to get started.

From Hostgator:

Step 1: Back up all your WordPress files which is located in the home or root folder of your WordPress installation. Select all files, then click compressed icon. Choose zip archived, then click compressed tab.

Step 3: After compressing, find the zip file ( or how you name the file ) in the root directory, then click download.

Step 4: In your HostGator cpanel, access to phpMyAdmin in database section. Locate your domain's database name. Then,  export the Database( .sql ). If you are unsure of your domain's database name, click this tutorial. 

Since you have already a backup of the WordPress database (.sql file) and wordpress zip file, then let's proceed migrating your files to BlueHost account provided that you have added the domain and pointed the Domain Name Server to BlueHost, otherwise, migration won't work.


BlueHost Account

Step 1:  In your Cpanel, go to File Manager under file management section. In the drop down list click the domain to bring you in the root directory. Click upload icon found at the top, then upload the zip file.During the process you will see this. Wait until uploading is complete.

Step 2: After you successfully uploaded the zip file, click extract icon. Click reload so you can see new contents such as wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes, etc.

Step 3: Before you can import, the database (.sql file), you need to create a database. Save your database name, database username and password in a text file for future use.

   How to create database and username in Bluehost.

Step 4: In your cpanel, locate Database tools section and click phpMyAdmin icon. Locate your database's name at the left. Click import and upload .sql file.

Step 5.  When upload is successful, check your newly migrated site. Once you see Database Error on the screen, you have to edit wp-config.php in the root directory of your domain. Find wp-config.php, right click and click edit.

Step 5: Once in the editor, you will see a lot of codes in wordpress, you have to look for this codes as shown below. Codes in red marks are your Hostgator database credentials, replace them with the new ones.  Refer back to step 3.

define('DB_NAME', 'jenili94_wrdp39');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'jenili94_wrdp39');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '79LJqqx3wb77');

Step 6:After these steps, your site should work now! Congratulations.