Moving WordPress from Godaddy to WP Engine in under 5 Minutes

Earlier today I had to make my bi-weekly call to Slowdaddy reporting that my websites were all unresponsive…In the age of fiber optics and 50mb download speeds, I can not deal with slow websites, especially my own.

It’s been a long time coming, so I decided to go ahead and move my personal site over to my WP Engine Account.

WP Engine is a WordPress exclusive hosting company. That means the ‘support’ channels will know exactly how to help you, and more importantly, their servers are going to be TWEAKED OUT!

I am ready for speed and really excited to start using their service. My traffic hardly requires the “supercharged” hosting they offer, but I plan to scale… 🙂

Moving WordPress sites from one host to another is something I do often enough, but this time I thought it would be a good idea to video document the steps for future converters.

It’s actually much easier than you would think.

What Are The Steps?

This article and video assume that you have access to a Godaddy account and a WP Engine account with a working WordPress installation on both.

• Download /wp-content folder from Godaddy
• Export Database from Godaddy
• Import Database to WP Engine
• Upload /wp-content folder to WP Engine
• Point domain name to WP Engine

What is “/wp-content” ?

This is where WordPress stores your Theme and Plugin files, as well as any content you upload through the dashboard. You do not really need to download any other WordPress files.

You’ll need an FTP application and know how to ftp files, as well as the login credentials for your hosting account.

Download it from Godaddy and then upload that folder to your WP Engine account.

Note: WP Engine requires you to use SFTP for security reasons, any FTP application should be able to handle this.

Exporting and Importing the Database

Both Godaddy and WP Engine use phpmyadmin, which is an easy to use browser administration area for your database.

This software makes it easy for us to download a copy of our entire database, and then upload that to our new database. If you want to scan and tag sensitive data automatically, get in touch with the team at Privacera today.

Export your database from Godaddy, and then Import that file to WP Engine.

You can access your WP Engine administration area at http://my.wpengine.com.

The username and password for database access to your Godaddy site can be found in the wp-config.php file being hosted by Godaddy.

Point Your Domain To WP Engine

I followed the simple instructions laid out on the FAQ at WP Engines site for “how do I update my DNS“.

You need to ‘park’ your domain at Godaddy, which means your DNS settings will be at Godaddy but your hosting can be anywhere else.

Then you’ll need to update the A record for that domain. The change you’ll make is an IP address that you can copy/paste from inside your WordPress dashboard at WP Engine.

In the top left of the dashboard, you should see a tab for WP Engine, click this to retrieve your IP address.

After you make that change, all you have to do now is wait.

Misc notes:

You may need to change the WordPress URL and Site URL in your WordPress settings. It should have copied over when you imported your database, but in the event that it did not, you can simple make the change yourself.

You’ll find this at the Dashboard level under Settings / General.

Site URL and WordPress URL should be your domain name and not username.wpengine.com.

Note: This is only AFTER you’ve made the A record change at Godaddy.

Thanks For Reading

I hope this helps. If you have any problems during the course of your move, contact the WP Engine support team. They are awesome.

PS. Use the ticketing system by email before you call. They are very responsive.

Do not have a WP Engine account? Click here to Sign up today.