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Move WordPress Website to GoDaddy – Transfer WordPress to GoDaddy

Comments Off RSS Site Feed Author: AITpro Admin
Published: May 14, 2010
Updated: October 6, 2012

The orginal question was regarding how to move a WordPress website to GoDaddy.  More specifically information on how to generally proceed with a WordPress installation, move and migration.

Transferring a WordPress website to GoDaddy requires quite a few steps. Here is the general concept so that you can visualize what you need to do next. I have also added some technical information that may be helpful to you as well.

You bought your domain name through GoDaddy so they are now your domain name registrar.
You bought a web hosting account from GoDaddy so they are now your web hosting company.
It sounds like you already have an existing WordPress website so you will be moving it or more correctly technically – migrating your WordPress Website to GoDaddy from I assume WordPress.com.
The simplest and easiest approach is to install WordPress in your GoDaddy account first. GoDaddy offers the WordPress Application as one of their available applications that you can install in your account for your website domain (same as website) using their automated WordPress application installer.
The reason you want to install WordPress on GoDaddy even though you may have a WordPress Website somewhere else is because what you will be migrating (basically downloading to your computer and then uploading via FTP to your GoDaddy account) is any WordPress files that you modified yourself. There is no need to copy your entire old WordPress website because most of the WordPress files are the core platform files. This is why you would install a fresh copy of WordPress and then upload the things you added to your old WordPress website. ie WordPress Plugins, customized WordPress Theme templates, image uploads, your style.css file you customized, etc. Basically you just need to download and upload any files that you added yourself or modified yourself for your old WordPress website. The other very important step is backing up your WordPress SQL database on your old WordPress website. I recommend installing the WP-DBManager plugin on your old WordPress website. It is a backup plugin that will back up your old WordPress SQL database for you and email you that backup. So once WordPress is installed on your GoDaddy account you can just import your old WordPress SQL database into your new WordPress SQL database created for you when you installed WordPress in your GoDaddy account.

There are a lot of different scenarios depending on what particular type of WordPress website move or migration you are doing so since your question does not specifically state your exact scenario I can only generalize my answer.  For specific instructions on moving WordPress within your website domain and from one host to another host click the official WordPress Codex link below.

Official WordPress Resource Page on Moving WordPress Websites

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