Move WordPress with Duplicator (Simple Guide 2022)

You want to move your Word­Press web­site to a new hos­ter and are now loo­king for a sui­ta­ble solu­ti­on? Then you’­ve come to the right place. With the Word­Press plug­in Dupli­ca­tor (exists in Free and Pro ver­si­on), you can effort­less­ly per­form the move direct­ly from your Word­Press dash­board. Dupli­ca­tor exports a back­up of the data­ba­se, archi­ves all files and crea­tes an instal­ler that gui­des you step-by-step through the instal­la­ti­on.

Loo­king for a plug­in free solu­ti­on for your move? Move Word­Press — The com­ple­te gui­de for 2021

Optional — cleaning up legacy issues #

Befo­re you start your move, con­sider doing some clea­ning up ahead of time. This can save you unneces­sa­ry work later. Also, the archi­ve you crea­te for the move will not be unneces­s­a­ri­ly bloa­ted.

• Unin­stall and dele­te plug­ins that are no lon­ger nee­ded.
• Remo­ve spam, drafts and revi­si­ons that are no lon­ger nee­ded.
• Emp­ty the trash for posts, pages and other post types.
• Clean up the data­ba­se.

Install and activate Duplicator #

Via Word­Press > Plug­ins> Install you can search and install the Dupli­ca­tor plug­in. To do this, sim­ply install the plug­in (see below) as usu­al via Install now and then acti­va­te it.

After the instal­la­ti­on you will find a new ent­ry “Dupli­ca­tor” in the menu whe­re all set­tings can be made.

Step 1: Create archive #

A Word­Press web­site con­sists of files and a data­ba­se. In order for your web­site to be dis­play­ed on your new hos­ting, you will need to move both the data­ba­se and the files. To do this, you now crea­te an archi­ve with the Dupli­ca­tor that con­ta­ins both. To do this, first go to Dupli­ca­tor > Archi­ve and click on the Crea­te New but­ton.

You will now be gui­ded through the pro­cess in three steps.

Duplicator Setup #

In the first step (Set­up), the­re are more optio­nal set­tings available. Among other things, you can spe­ci­fy the name of the archi­ve, set fil­ters and sel­ect the loca­ti­on. Howe­ver, for a stan­dard move, the default set­tings are enough for you.

Cli­cking on Next will take you direct­ly to the next step.

Duplicator Scan #

In the second step (scan), Dupi­ca­tor now tests the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on and checks whe­ther the archi­ve can theo­re­ti­cal­ly be crea­ted. If the­re are any pro­blems, they will be lis­ted here and you will have to fix them first. Among the most com­mon cau­ses of errors here are:

• Too lar­ge files (images, vide­os, ZIP archi­ves, back­ups …)
• Too long file names
• Spe­cial cha­rac­ters and umlauts
• Miss­ing read and wri­te per­mis­si­ons

If ever­y­thing is in the green area (Okay), you can start the pro­cess by cli­cking on Crea­te.

Create Duplicator #

In the third and last step (Crea­te) Dupli­ca­tor now crea­tes the archi­ve in the back­ground. This can take quite some time depen­ding on the size of the web­site.

After the pro­cess is com­ple­te, you will see a sta­tus page whe­re you can down­load your data.

Down­load the data direct­ly via the One-Click Down­load link or by cli­cking Instal­ler and Archi­ve .

Step 2: Move WordPress to the target server #

Befo­re you start instal­ling Word­Press on your new hos­ting, you need to make a few pre­pa­ra­ti­ons:

• First of all, you need to crea­te a new data­ba­se into which you will import the Word­Press data. It is best to make a note of the access data (data­ba­se name, pass­word, user and host) that will be requi­red for the instal­la­ti­on.
• If you want, you can now crea­te a sepa­ra­te fol­der for the new Word­Press instal­la­ti­on. But pay atten­ti­on to the naming, that no spe­cial cha­rac­ters, spaces or umlauts are used.
• Last but not least, you have to chan­ge the path of the domain so that it points to your new fol­der.

Install Duplicator Archive #

Now upload the archi­ve file and the Installer.php via FTP to the new ser­ver in the pre­vious­ly crea­ted fol­der. Then call the instal­la­ti­on rou­ti­ne. The path to this is as fol­lows:

www.[deine-domain].de/installer.php

This will take you to the Dupli­ca­tor Wizard which will gui­de you through the instal­la­ti­on step by step.

Duplicator preflight #

The instal­ler checks in advan­ce if all para­me­ters are set cor­rect­ly and points out errors. If ever­y­thing is in the green area, you still have to check the box I have read and accept all terms & noti­ces and then con­ti­nue by cli­cking Next.

Duplicator database setup #

In the second step you now store the new data­ba­se data.

• Host: In most cases, the host is “local­host” or “127.0.0.1”. In a few cases, e.g. with IONOS, the­re are indi­vi­du­al paths. You have to enter it here. You will usual­ly be infor­med of the host by your pro­vi­der.
• Data­ba­se: In Data­ba­se you enter the name of the data­ba­se.
• User: Enter the user name for your data­ba­se here.
• Pass­word: Enter the pass­word for the data­ba­se in this field.

Then click on Test Data­ba­se to check whe­ther a con­nec­tion can be estab­lished. If an error occurs here, you should check the ente­red data.

Cli­cking Next once again opens a con­fir­ma­ti­on win­dow. Here you will see your access data again and have to con­firm them manu­al­ly.

Check your data and then con­firm with Ok to con­ti­nue.

Duplicator database data customize #

Next, you can cus­to­mi­ze the path, domain and title of the web­site. You can also cor­rect the admin access of your web­site here.

Check your set­tings again and con­firm by cli­cking Next to start the instal­la­ti­on pro­cess.

Depen­ding on the size of your web­site, instal­la­ti­on and set­up may take a while.

WordPress move completed #

After the instal­la­ti­on you will get to a sta­tus page which shows you a sum­ma­ry of the instal­la­ti­on.

You can now log in with your Word­Press data. The instal­ler and the archi­ve will be dele­ted auto­ma­ti­cal­ly after the instal­la­ti­on if you lea­ve the check­box sel­ec­ted.

For addi­tio­nal infor­ma­ti­on about instal­la­ti­on and pos­si­ble pro­blems, see Dupli­ca­tor > Tools.

Frequently asked questions and answers #

Conclusion #

Dupli­ca­tor is a Word­Press plug­in that allows you to quick­ly and easi­ly crea­te a com­ple­te copy of a Word­Press web­site in just a few steps. Espe­ci­al­ly for smal­ler stan­dard pages it saves a lot of time and ner­ves and is well sui­ted for lay­men.

In addi­ti­on, you can also use Dupli­ca­tor to crea­te a back­up of your web­site.

Dupli­ca­tor is available in both a free and a pre­mi­um vari­ant. The free ver­si­on usual­ly covers the most com­mon requi­re­ments. Should you be one of the exo­tics who runs a Word­Press mul­ti­si­te or would like addi­tio­nal opti­ons like Drop­box con­nec­ti­vi­ty, then a look at the pre­mi­um ver­si­on makes sen­se.