Alright... I'm going to try to make this as easy on myself as I can so I figured I better ask all of you guys. What is the easiest way to move an entire Joomla site? Let's say I built
www.example.com
and wanted to move it to a completly different server / hosting provider.
I'm on godaddy.com right now where my database and everything is and I need to move my entire site.
Is there a simple way to do this?
Do I just copy everything from my ftp and backup my database somehow? Any help in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
I tried a couple of migration tools when I moved from a test server to a production server, but without any real success. I tried "JoomlaGhost" and "JoomlaCloner," both of which seemed to have real promise, but neither one worked for me. I think this was probably because the production server environment I use is locked down pretty tight, and I kept running up against security settings and server limitations. I finally wound up just copying all of the files with FTP (first to my local machine, then to the new site). I also had tocopying the relevant MySQL tables, then load them into the MySQL database file on the new site. "PU Database Admin" was helpful for that part of the project.
If you can get either JoomlaCloner or JoomlaGhost to work I would think that would be the way to go. Moving all of those MySQL tables was pretty tedious, because I couldn't find a good tool to do them all in a batch.
JoomlaCloner waste a waste of $70 for me... not because it is a buggy product(which it isn't), but because like Doug's, my server is pretty locked down. Jpack on the other hand works most of the time:
extensions.joomla.org/component/option,c...it,15/limitstart,30/
Read the review by Alan C for more tips.
You can easily export your database from Godaddy by accessing your hosting control panel, clicking on MySql, and editing the database. There you can export all of your tables. I simply click on Export, and save the file as a mysql file.
I have never needed a third party extension / cloner
That Joomla thread above is very helpful...
You should be able to export your entire database. It may help to export it as a zipped file. If your site is massive, export a few tables at a time; instead of all at once. At least this way you are entirely in control and aware of what is happening
Like Caltucker mentioned, doing it manually is real simple. One advantage of using an extension is that it zips up all your files for you so you only need to download (and upload to the new server) the single zip rather than 4000 odd files.
I know this may sound weird but for some reason I can't extract a zip file on my ftp. Am I doing something wrong or is it because I use .rar instead of zip? Thank you guys for your help. It is nice to see that it's been done and it isn't a real pain. Thanks -Brad
Hmmm.. my FTP app doesn't extract them either.. I use SSH (putty) for that. Anyone here use an FTP app that has an extract function? If Filezilla does it, it certainly isn't obvious.
I've moved a few sites, but I've done it manually. Even went and did a search and replace in the mysql dump file to change the directory paths that were stored it it.
As for the zip files, you may have to unzip it on your PC and then do a recursive copy up to your new host. I insist on using a host company that allows shell access so I don't have to deal with just using FTP.