Inmotion is a very reliable web hosting service provider with user-friendly account management panel and customized cPanel. If you plan to host a WordPress site on their servers, you can choose to enable the BoldGrid option during the sign up process, so they will help you create a beautiful WordPress website automatically. Your site will be ready instantly after you placed the order. You can also use its auto-installer in cPanel to run the script to automatically create a WordPress site in cPanel with Inmotion in just a few clicks. Skilled users can choose to manually install a WordPress site as well. What if I already have created the site on my local computer or host it with another web hosting service provider? Today, we will outline the easy steps to move an existing WordPress site to Inmotion hosting servers from another web hosting company or your local computer.
Step 1. Back up your WordPress site first
You have to back up your website first. WordPress sites are database driven. Except the web pages, you need also to back up the database. If your previous hosting service provider offers cPanel, you can go to Files > File Manager to compress the WordPress directory as a ZIP file, then download it to your computer. The database can be backed up using the phpMyAdmin which can also be found in cPanel. You can refer to these steps to backup WordPress database in cPanel using phpMyAdmin.
Step 2. Create and Restore database
Log on your hosting control panel with Inmotion. Go to create a database for your WordPress site from cPanel > Databases > MySQL Database Wizard. Check out this step-by-step guide to create a MySQL database in cPanel with Inmotion hosting.
The database backup can be imported to the new database using phpMyAdmin as well, the same tool we use to create database backups in cPanel above. Here are the steps to restore MySQL database in phpMyAdmin.
Step 3. Add domain to cPanel if not yet
If you have filled in your own domain name during the signup process, you don’t need to manually add it from cPanel. If not, follow these steps to add domain, subdomain to cPanel with Inmotion. You will be prompted to choose a folder or location to save your website files when adding a domain to your server.
If your site is running on the server, don’t change the name servers now. We will make sure everything else works fine on the new server before pointing our domain to the new server. We will discuss this issue further at the bottom section of this post.
Step 4. Upload website files
You can upload website files from computer to web server using a FTP software or the File Manager in cPanel. The File Manager in cPanel can help you unarchive the zip file online, so we don’t have to unzip it on our computer. Note that it supports ZIP files, not RAR files. For batch file uploading, we suggest you compressing them first. Make sure to upload files, move or extract files to your domain path, the folder your domain name is pointed to.
Step 5. Configure WordPress database connection
WordPress database connection is defined in the wp-config.php file. It is one of the most important files in your WordPress installation. This file is located in the root of your WordPress file directory. You can open and edit it using the online File Manager in cPanel. Right click on it, choose Edit from the pop-up menu. The wp-config.php file contains your website’s database connection information, database server, database name, username, user password, etc.
Update these information with your new database information which we created above on Inmotion server.
Step 6. Install SSL (optional)
If you have already installed SSL for your site with previous hosting service provider, you may want to install SSL on the new server as well. Inmotion web hosting provides us free SSL. If it is a brand new site, you can skip this step for now and install SSL later.
Contact Inmotion support team via live chat to get the AutoSSL turned on so any website added to your hosting server will have the SSL protected automatically. You don’t have to manually install SSL certificate with Inmotion hosting.
Step 7. Emulate DNS on computer (optional)
Before you go to change domain DNS with your current registrar, you may choose to emulate DNS change via hosts file on your local computer to test the website on live server. So you can make sure your website is working properly before redirecting your site visitors to the new server. Mac users can also emulate the DNS change, see how you can find and edit hosts file on Mac.
Step 8. Update domain DNS
Inmotion will provide you the domain name servers so you can point your domain from other registrar to Inmotion hosting. Check it from your Welcome email or the
Currently their public name servers are:
ns.inmotionhosting.com 74.124.210.242
ns2.inmotionhosting.com 70.39.150.2
You can refer to this tutorial to change name servers for your domain with GoDaddy, just as an example.
