Recently I had to move this site to another host and before I could go forward in doing the needed, I went through the wordpress documentation which was very confusing. Further I went through some other blogs which discussed the work arounds, but finally I had to use my own ways to do it sucessfully. Normally moving the site with the traditional wordpress method doesnot keep the same feel, but my method did.

While walking you through the process, I would also give some explaination of why do we perform a particular action.

1-> Create a new cpanel account ( addon domain ) on the new host, we will call it HOST-B and the old host as HOST-A.

2-> Use FireFTP or any other FTP that you normally use and copy the wp-content folder to your local disk from HOST-A.

We backup the whole wp-content folder

3-> Use PhpMyAdmin on HOST-A and backup your database to local disk by using the “EXPORT” tab and selecting appropriate database. This file can be exported as a SQL text file or zipped file, however you prefer.

Now we have completed the first phase and backed up the most important files ie. Themes, Uploads, Plugins and the dependent files along with the Database.

4-> Download the latest copy of WordPress from wordpress.org and install it on HOST-B as you installed for the 1st time. Once you have installed the new copy of wordpress, login to the cpanel of HOST-B and got to PhpMyAdmin. Now select the database you created while installing wordpres on HOST-B and delete all the tables.

You have emptied the database by deleting all the tables and now we will fool wordpress by replacing it by importing the database we had backed up on local disk.

5-> Now move to the IMPORT tab and import the database that we had saved in Step-3. This brings the HOST-A database to HOST-B

Now we have to bring our actual theme, plugins and uploads in place.

6-> Use your FTP software and connect to HOST-B. Once connected, Delete the folder wp-content and upload the wp-content folder on the local disk, which we had backed up in step 2.

7-> Now clear close the FTP connection, clear cookies and open your site. Bingo!!! The sites up and running!!

NOTE: Make sure that the DNS change has taken place. I would suggest you to wait for few hours after you change the DNS and confirm that you are not connected to the old server when you kay in the URL.