General WP support

[Rama Devi]

Hello Bill, I will try to figure out the animations. In d meanwhile, I have a few common questions.

1) How to backup my Website?

2) How to Migrate my Website? I tried using some plugins, but the domain of the previous website is coming to the new website. Once I restore the backup, am even unable to access the wordpress login

3) I choose to shift my hosting to Google. But my Domain is with Godaddy. I pointed my Domain to the Google hosting, but when I click the inner pages, the pages are still showing the google IP.

Ex : http://104.197.1.176/laser-engraving/

Rather, I want the pages to show my domain. How to set this?

[Bill Robbins]

Good questions that are closely related too.

Your WordPress site is made up of a database (pages, posts, menus, widgets — content) and files (images, WordPress core, plugins, themes). So to backup your site, you’ll need a copy of both the files and the database. You can do this by hand by exporting your database from inside the myPHPAdmin on your server and downloading the files via FTP.

You can also use a plugin to do this for you. I’ve used one called BackupBuddy quite a bit. It will let you download a zip file that has all your files and database in one package. It also has an import tool that you can use to add the files to a new server. As part of the import, it will change the server and file paths to match the new server. It’s a good product.

Another option is WordPress Backup to DropBox. This plugin will backup all your files to your Drop Box account and also export your database. It will require you to manually import if you need to restore/more them. But it does work.

The company behind WordPress.com has a service called VaultPress that will backup your site and also move it for you. I haven’t used this, but lots of people like it.

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For moving a site, you might find WP Migrate DB helpful. It exports your database and will also replace any URL or server paths that you ask it to as part of the export.

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With your new server, go to Settings in your WordPress dashboard. The screen that pops up should be the general settings one, if not click on it. There are two fields near the top for the WordPress url and WordPress admin URL. Make sure those match the URL you’re wanting for both.

Here are a few posts that might be helpful too:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/04/moving-wordpress-website/
http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/how-to-safely-move-wordpress/
https://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/moving-wordpress-moving-your-site-manually–cms-22770
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/moving-wordpress-using-plugins-to-move-your-site–cms-22774

Let me know if you have any questions,
Bill

[Rama Devi]

Bill, one more question. You told that I can change the website name by changing the WP general settings. I tried doing that yesterday and my website got down immediately. I was even unable to login to it again. It created a lot of mess. I had to delete my WordPress deployment & create a fresh website.

I built a new website on Google hosting today, took a backup of it & tried to do the same. The website again went down & I couldnt access the login. Attached below is the error I got. I had to delete everything.

I want my website to show “www.luccaitalo.in” on all the pages instead of the google IP. You have my login details. Please do that for me. If you succeed to change it, please tell me how to do it. It will be useful when I encounter a similar situation in the future.

I also have a query regarding this. If changing the IP/ URL is so simple, people will create a mess of it. Everyone would change it to apple.com or amazon.com. Wont there be any security checks to confirm if I am the legal owner of the domain am changing my IP to? Is this the standard process of changing your IP to your domain? Please let me know. Cheers

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[Bill Robbins]

I believe we may have been speaking about different things here. You can change the name of your site at the top of the settings screen. I’ve never seen that cause an issue before. You can also do that in the customizer.

The URL for the site is also set on the general settings screen. It’s a more advanced option to use and generally will require changes outside of WordPress to take effect.

In order for a server to use a domain name, the DNS settings have to be configured properly for that name to work. That’s what keeps you from actually using apple.com or something like that. Apple owns the registration for the domain name and through that, the DNS settings. The DNS tells the internet which server to visit for the content. It’s like a phone directory in a way.

Before you can change your URL’s in your WordPress settings, you have to update your DNS. Otherwise the site won’t be accessible. If you ever do lock yourself out, you can change it back inside the database directly, so don’t delete everything.

Most likely your DNS settings will be where you have your name registered. Generally you would change the “A” record there for your domain name so that it goes to 104.197.1.176 .

DNS changes can take up to two days to take effect. You may see an immediate change, but it could take a while. That somewhat depends on your internet service provider as they keep a cached copy of DNS records to speed up the internet.

If you have questions, let me know.

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