Migrate a WordPress Website with UpdraftPlus for Free (without Migrator or UpdraftClone)

How to Move a WordPress Site to a New Host

We often need to move a WordPress website to a new server or set up locally. I will usually use Wordmove and SSH to do this. But sometimes the client does not have SSH access to the server. In this case I will usually use Duplicator. Recently the client website had UpdraftPlus installed on the existing website.

1. Install the free UpdraftPlus plugin on the old and new website.
2. Backup your old website (db, plugins, theme, uploads, etc…) using the plugin.
3. Transfer the backup files from the old site to the new site’s updraft directory http://newsite.com/wp-content/updraft/
4. And add the following lines in the new site’s wp-config.php file: define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://newsite.com’);
define(‘WP_HOME’, WP_SITEURL);
5. Login to the new site and restore the backup files via the UpdraftPlus plugin. 
6. Once restored, you will need to update the new website’s database with the new url. You can either use wp-cli or install a database Search and Replace plugin.