In the world of web hosting, there will definitely come a time when you want to change your web hosting plan or change web host completely. Ideally, we would all like to keep our first host. Like a first love, may the flame remain. However, life and its hazards await no one. Several reasons can motivate a change. We can cite in particular the transition from shared hosting to dedicated hosting to meet the growing needs of the company; stopping the activity of the current host; repeated dissatisfaction with the current web host. Web hosting companies for the most part encourage migrations from their competitors by offering a free web migration service. If your web host does not offer this service and you decide to execute Joomla migration by yourself, we will guide you through this procedure.
Migration of Joomla! to another server
The migration of Joomla! to another server takes place in several stages. However, these steps boil down to transferring data from a Joomla! from one server to another. In fact, a Joomla! is broken down into two parts: the configuration files and the database where the site data is located. We will use an FTP client to retrieve the configuration files on a computer and upload them to the new hosting. Likewise for the database using the appropriate tool. It is important to note that the migration may fail if your new server is not compatible with the installation of Joomla !.
Migrating files
To connect to the current hosting, login information is required. These are the host name of the server, the login and password as well as the connection port. Your host will provide them to you. So go to your FTP client (like Filezilla) and enter the connection information. Then find the folder where you will find the configuration.php file (usually public_html). Copy all the files from this folder to your computer using your FTP client. Now initiate a new connection from your FTP client to the new server. Likewise, search for the public file to transfer these files to. This completes the migration of configuration files.
Database migration
To complete the migration of your Joomla! Site, we also migrate the database. This tutorial will describe a migration using the phpMyAdmin tool, but the principle of migrating from Joomla! remains the same. Access phpMyAdmin to select the database and export it by clicking on the « Export » button. Wait while the import takes place and proceed to the next step. Create a new database by entering the host name, user name, name and password of the database. Then, still in phpMyAdmin, select the new database and import the contents of the old database.
Updating the configuration
So that Joomla! can run on the new server and complete the migration from Joomla !, the configuration.php file needs to be updated. Indeed, this update aims to link the new database and configuration files. Find in this file the lines relating to information on the database and update them. Also update the $ log_path and $ tmp_path parameters to ‘/ PATH-TO-PUBLIC-FOLDER / administrator / logs’ and ‘/ PATH-TO-PUBLIC-FOLDER / tmp” respectively. You will now be able to access your site on the new server.