If you're doing site transfer using cPanel, then you need to keep the following in mind. I may also suggest to use a plugin like Duplicator or so if doing manually is too much of work for you. Let's see how you can do a manual transfer.
Current Server
1. Assuming all your files are in public_html
directory, compress them all using cPanel compress feature. Once done, you will something like wp-admin.zip
in your public_html
directory.
Download the wp-admin.zip
file in your computer.
2. Visit phpMyAdmin
and locate your site DB. Let's call this wp_current_server
. On the database screen where you can see all your DB tables for your wp_current_server
DB, hit Export button and hit Go. No other step is needed there.
After a few seconds an SQL file will be downloaded on your computer.
So, now you have all your files in the wp-admin.zip
and DB in the wp_current_server.sql
file.
New Server
3. Login to your new server cPanel and locate public_html
directory. Assuming the entire directory is empty, just upload your wp-admin.zip
file there.
Once uploaded, use the Extract feature in the cPanel and decompress wp-admin.zip
file. After that you will see all your WP folders and files like wp-admin
, wp-includes
, wp-content
and so.
Now you can safely delete your wp-admin.zip
file from your server.
4. Move to Database section in your cPanel and create a new DB. Give a name to your DB, create a DB username and add a password. Keep note of all them in a text file like notepad. You will need them all.
Do make sure you give all the privileges to your DB user.
5. Now hit the phpMyAdmin
button and locate your newly created DB. It will be empty of course.
Look for the import button in the top bar and import your wp_current_server.sql
there. Again keep the configuration default. Wait for a few seconds before the import is complete. If you domain name does not change in your new server, your job is done there. Move to the # 6 below
6. In your public_html
directory, locate the wp-config.php file in the root. Open this with and find the constants like db_name
, db_username
, db_password
. Fill in these all correctly from your saved notepad. Save the file and then visit your site. You're done.