While preparing for WordCamp Europe one of the things we are working on is ways to make it easier for customers to migrate their WordPress sites to Shifter.
Migrating WordPress shouldn’t be a pain but that’s not always the case. Depending on factors like overall site size, premium plugin dependencies, or custom Themes, migrating can be tricky.
We’ve experienced this ourselves while on-boarding new users and one of the solutions we often recommend can be found freely in the official WordPress plugin directory.
All-in-One WP Migration is a plugin for creating backups or migrating between hosting providers or your local development environment.
We like this plugin because it preserves your site settings during the move and can package premium plugins, themes, or the entire media library. The Plugin also offers advanced options so you can customize what exactly gets backed up.
Pros
One of the best features of WP Migration is compatibility. When exporting from another hosting environment there are lots of variables to consider such as max file size and upload limits. This plugin was designed to work with the lowest common WordPress requirements and doesn’t rely on PHP versions either.
By adding those features WP Migrate has the flexibility to work seamlessly on plenty of hosting environments, removing one less thing you have to worry about during your migration.
One of it’s best features is how easy it is to use. We believe that any user with basic knowledge of navigating the WordPress backend can create a site backup and migrate using this plugin.
Cons
WP Migrate has a limit of 512M for the free version. This isn’t necessarily a downside for the Plugin it’s just the limit that the free plugin directory version allows. While the plugin can handle sites much larger than that you’ll need to add their unlimited extension or look for a migration alternative.
Caveats
Even with 512M limit, it’s still possible to move larger sites using WP Migration. Within the advacned options during backup you can select which parts to skip, such as the WordPress media library.
By skipping the media library you can create a smaller backup, likely to be under that 512M limit. That will migrate your posts, pages, plugins, and themes without the media libary.
After that, you can migrate your media library using the built-in WordPress import/export tool. This is a way around that limit but does require more work. If you’re doing this a lot upgrading to the unlimited extension or finding an alternative option may be worth considering.
Migrate a different way?
Let us know how you migrate WordPress sites. If you have tips you’d like to share send them our way.
Shifter Migration Guides
We offer migration guides in our Support Docs. If you need more help or advice let us know or browser the Articles anytime.