In this guide we will walk through the process of migrating your existing website/application over to purely.website. The process can sound quite daunting, but make sure you take backups and do thorough testing before making any DNS changes, it should a be seamless move. Please note this guide is ONLY for Linux/PHP based accounts.
Transferring your domain over to us
It makes sense to have your domain and hosting in one place, you can use our domain transfer guide to move the domain over first.
Backing up your existing website data
Depending on your provider, you may be able to download a complete .zip of your domains folder, or just download the files via FTP.
Application specific tools
- WordPress – UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular and easy to use.
- Drupal – Backup and Migrate, Back up and restore your Drupal MySQL database, code, and files or migrate a site between environments.
- Joomla – Akeeba Backup, Akeeba Backup creates a full backup of your site in a single archive.
Backing up any databases in use
Within your existing provider you will need to export any MySQL databases. For compatibility these need to be either exported as compressed (.sql.gz) or an uncompressed (.sql) SQL file.
Backing up mailboxes
Depending on how you access your email, the backup process can be done a few ways. The easiest and most convenient is just to backup the email from your email client. We have guides here,
Outlook: Backing up your emails, calender and contacts
Macmail: Exporting your email in Mac Mail 8
Uploading your backups
Once you have a copy of your website on your local machine, restoring it to the purely.website service is much easier. There are a few ways to do this,
Zipping up the backup and uploading/extracting via the file manager
- On the machine you’ve used to take your FTP backup of the websites files, go into the folder, select all the files and create a .zip file.
- Within your cp.purely.website control panel, click Files, double click into the public_html folder, click the Upload button, click file, then find the .zip file from your local machine and click open.
- The file will begin to upload, showing you the progress at the bottom right of the screen.
- Once the backup has been uploaded, you will see the new zip file in the file manager, right click on this file and click Uncompress. Depending on the size of the backup, this may take a while to complete. If the above method isn’t working for you, you should try the FTP method below.
Using FTP
- First you will need to ensure your domain name is already using the purely.website nameservers (ns1.purely.website, ns2.purely.website, ns3.purely.website).
- While logged into your cp.purely.website control panel, click Advanced, FTP.
- Click Add account. set your username e.g youruser@yourdomain.co.uk, a strong password, and if required access to a specific directory. By default this is / the root domain folder. Click Add.
- Now you’ve setup your FTP user, you can use the following details to connect via your FTP client;
Host: ftp.yourdomain.co.uk
Username: youruser@yourdomain.co.uk
Password: Your chosen strong password
Restoring the database
First we must create our new database and associate user.
- While logged into your cp.purely.website control panel, click Databases, Add database.
- Create your new database name, this will start with part of your domain name as the prefix, enter the second part after the _ click Add.
- Once the database has been created, we will need to create and assign a user to it. Click on the newly created database. Click Database users, click Add.
- Enter your new username and strong password, generally leaving All database privileges ticked is recommended, leave other settings as the default and click Add.
Using the built in SQL upload function
Below your newly created Database user, you will see the Upload SQL header, you can click the upload button, navigate the the backup on your local machine and click open. The upload will begin, note the max upload size is 1gb, large databases can be tarred (.gz) to compress them to a much smaller size to allow a quicker upload/to fit within the 1gb limit.
Using PhpMyadmin to upload the SQL database
From the top of this page, you also have access to PhpMyAdmin, clicking the Open PhpMyAdmin link will automatically log you into your database using your database user. Your database can be imported using the import tab in the main menu
- Click on your database in the left menu.
- Click on Import using the main menu, under the heading File to Import, click choose your file and locate your local MySQL database backup, click open. scroll to the bottom of the page and click import.
Don’t forget to update your websites database connection strings to the new MySQL database details in your website configuration.
Testing the website
Its important to make sure everything is working as it should be before updating the nameservers (DNS) to point the domain over to the new service. The best way to do this is to update the host file on your local machine. This allows you to browse the website as if the DNS was already updated. Note you may receive SSL related warnings until the DNS is updated, this is expected and the free SSL service makes use of the live DNS to issue the certificate.
Updating the nameservers
Once happy that all is working as it should be, and you haven’t done already, you will need to update the nameservers for the domain. If your domain is hosted with us (purely.website) then this is a simple selection in the nameservers section of the control panel. If your domain is else where you will need to update the nameservers on the domain to,
- ns1.purely.website
- ns2.purely.website
- ns3.purely.website
Tools/Guides to help with the migration process
Here are a few inhouse tools/ guides as well as some external tools to help with the migration process.
https://purely.tools – Our custom built inhouse tools to help with numerous testing, from DNS to SSL testing. A very helpful resource for checking/testing during any website migration or general debugging
https://imapsync.pipeten.co.uk – To help migrate emails between Pipe Ten services
