Last updated on July 17, 2020
Familiar with WordPress plugin and its installation? Migrating my WordPress website to Siteground hosting feels just like that.
You have probably heard of positive reviews about Siteground and been wanting to make the switch, but thinking not to take the risk and trouble. Or maybe not you, but I did.
Proscratinate no further. Notwithstanding the performance benefit and better resources, you will have saved at least 50% of your hosting cost by just switching to a different hosting, due to first time special rates.
I migrated all 6 of my websites in about 2 hours. But if you are still considering, here is how Siteground able to optimize your website better than any single plugin and hosting provider, via its SG Optimizer and Super Cacher.
Steps I took to migrate my WordPress website to Siteground
Assuming if you have signed up for its Hosting Plan,
1. Add Existing Domain on Siteground
Ignore the message at bottom and click Continue. The notice basically “reminds” you to type your domain url correctly and that you have access to the domain.
2. Select Migrate Website via super fast WordPress Migrator Plugin
Next, you might be prompted with an upsell i.e. SG Site Scanner, which is for site security. You can skip it especially if you are existingly using plugins like Wordfence.
3. Download the plugin and copy the Migration Token
This WordPress migrator plugin is called SiteGround Migrator (as of writing). Ignore the 3rd step below for now.
4. Login to WordPress dashboard and Add New Plugin – SiteGround Migrator plugin
Once uploaded, installed, and activated, look for a field column on the plugin tab to paste the Migration Token.
If you need to locate the Migration Token and copy again (yeah…I did), you can find it again in your Site Tool for the “Existing Website” you just created on your Siteground portal under the Website tab.
Note: Siteground also has cpanel but it is encouraging its existing clients to move away from cpanel to its proprietary Site Tool, which IMHO it’s so much more user friendly.
Copy and paste it on your SiteGround Migrator plugin section.
Note: At this point, if you have many questions prior to initiating the transfer, feel free to open up a support chat with Siteground for a hand-holding session or Q&A.
The “transfer” process does not actually move your files or contents from your existing host to Siteground, but rather making a copy. The duration of process depends on the size of the website, and can take up to 24hrs according to Siteground. Mine took less than 30 minutes.
Your computer must be ON AT ALL TIME, and to be safe just leave your WordPress logged on as well.
After the process is over, you can test view the site before actually making it live on Siteground hosting server. If it doesn’t look correct on preview, rectify it with Siteground technical support.
Mine had no issue hence I just logged into my domain registrar (ex: Namecheap/GoDaddy/Domain.com), and updated the DNS records.
After updating it, your website might not appear until after 48 hrs, or it might be sooner. In my case, it was almost immediate.
Done!
The actual transfer process actually only took less than 30minutes, but the research, reading and support chat took in total 2hrs.
If you are comfortable with the above steps, it saves you the time difference. Go on with it if you have no other questions. But always remember to speak with a technical support live if needed, and not reading old information.
Notwithstanding the cost saving, I personally feel the technical benefits of Siteground hosting is more important and goes a long way.
Find out the next steps on how to make the best use of Siteground optimization features with SG Optimizer and complementing with your existing plugins.
If your website and Search Console properties were previously in http protocol, you should create new Domain-Level Search Console properties and resubmit sitemap. This is important to tell Google your preferred and main url is in https, which is enabled under Siteground’s hosting.
If you have yet to register for its hosting plan, check out what helped me to decide to commit to a 2 years subscription plan.