Migrating your content from any hosting service should be as easy as signing up was, too bad it isn’t.
It is no secret that I am not a fan of some of the major internet services companies. From GoDaddy pushing unneeded services on older clients to WP Engine abridging WordPress and upselling clients based on imaginary bandwidth issues; I have seen and heard some horror stories.
Word Press site migrations are usually a breeze. You use a plugin to create and export file, and use the same plugin to import that file into your new site. It turns out this method does not work with WP Engine. While they do offer a complete backup of your website and content, it is littered with proprietary plugins and anti-migration entires littering the database. Even a simple manual migration to a new web host requires a scanning the backup and database for these files as they essentially brick your installation.
This is not a full tutorial. I am going to assume that you have some experience with site migrations, and that you found this article attempting to migrate a site and only need some nudges in the right direction.
Files to remove to ensure a successful migration.
After downloading and unzipping your backup file from WP Engine, locate and delete the following files from the wp-content folder to make it safe for upload to your new host.
- mu-lugins folder (the whole folder)
- advanced-cache.php
- object-cache.php
In the wp-content folder, find the mysql.sql file and save it to your desktop, this is your site’s database, the heart and soul of your website. Don’t lose it, you will need to import it to your new database.
Onto the site, I like to start with a fresh WordPress installation, then, via FTP, I replace the wp-content folder with the wp-content backup folder from WP Engine, this uploads all your themes, plugins, and media.
Next I create a new database and import the backup database to the new location. This requires refreshing the database and table prefix info in the new wp-config file.
Editing the options table
Once you have your database imported via PHPmyAdmin you will need to locate the options table. Once you find it, click on it. The first thing you may notice is the site url, name, etc are not in the usual first couple of cells. I have been finding them on page 4 of the options table. Anyway, You will need to scan around the options table and find the cells with links that point back to WPEngine and delete the link. They usually start with /nas/ or otherwise say wpengine outright.
Cell info to delete
Delete the option value only, Word Press use the default settings if empty.
- recently_edited
- fileupload_realpath
- wpe_feature_flags
- wpe_feature_flags_expiration
- BMI::STORAGE::LOCAL::PATH
- _transient_dirsize_cache
There could be a couple more, or maybe less in your install. The key is to scan through the options table and ensure you have deleted the paths back to WP Engine. This will ensure no errors when you launch your website for the first time.
Once you have your website up and running you will also need to delete any WP Engine user support accounts from your WordPress installation, you can do this from the database as well but it is easier from the Word Press Dashboard.
That should be it, I hope this article helps. If you need to hire someone for assistance, please contact me.