Transfering a wordpress blog site to a new hosting company

what do I need to do

[Nealreal]

So I have this Wordpress site, and I wanna transfer it to a new hosting company (I will transfer the domain name as well). The current server is slow and crappy. How can I do this without any downtime to the site? Do I need to reinstall Wordpress on the new server before it gets there and then just upload the files. Any help is appreciated.

Also, theres about 40 email addresses connected to the site? How do I transfer them over as well. I have an idea, just need a little guidance.

Will there be downtime

[adwatson]

I'd recommend that you talk to the hosting company that you're moving to. No doubt that they've helped with this before. If they're not helpful, then look for a different hosting company.

The key is to keep the domain pointing at the current site until you have everything set up and tested on the new site, then switch. There may be some overlap where traffic and email goes to both sites, so keep the old one up for at least a few days after the domain switch to be sure no one's still heading there.

[draggar]

Your current host should allow you to download the entire database (that stores all the blog information) to your computer as a local backup *but* the new host may not allow database uploading. I'd ask about this.

If not, and this isn't an easy way, have both databases open (phpMyAdmin or whatever) and manually copy the information from the old database to the new one.

You will probably have to re-initialize WordPress (like a new installation) so you can point it to the new database, but as long as the database is intact, the site should look identical (minus any customizations you've done).

[ergophobe]

I haven't done it with Wordpress, but I've done it with several database-driven scripts. Basically, what you want to do is

- set up the new account. You should be able to access it via the IP number without having it resolve to the domain.

- get Wordpress up and running over there using the IP number and then test it.

- Satisfied? Stop any posting on the old server, and close it to comments. Go into your domain registrar's control panel and update the information for the DNS servers. Once the info propagates, you'll be up and running on the new domain.

The only hitch will be if you have a lot of internal complete URLs that have the full domain and everything. Those, of course, will go back to the old site until the IP resolves. This should get it done without any downtime except that nobody will be able to post comments until the IP resolves.