I built a Wordpress site on a test server and tried to move it to the public server, but ended up in a mess. I started by updating the URL in Wordpress general settings like I’ve done before, but that was moving within the same server. Then I downloaded the site via FTP to my computer.
The new host is on 1&1, so I used the Wordpress install function. After that finished, I tried uploading from my computer to the new host, but it didn’t work. I then checked further and saw I shouldn’t have changed the URL and taken a completely different approach. So, I did some hunting and edited the original site’s wp-config.php so I could login again.
Then I went through all the steps here http://www.wpexplorer.com/migrating-wordpress-website/. However, now when I try to login as administrator, I get a perpetual loop of getting bounced from the new URL to the old and back again.
It’s hard to make sense of it, but any help would be appreciated. I need to migrate from one server to the next and have FTP access, but can’t login to Wordpress on either location.
If that doesn’t help, I would start from scratch, do a vanilla install, make sure its all working, then copy just the wp-content folder from the test server to the production server.
Thanks for the tips. I tried the login redirect options, but it didn’t help unfortunately. So I did a fresh install of Wordpress on the server and it’s running well. Chrome keeps going to the default page before Wordpress was installed, but that’s another issue.
I uploaded the wp-content folder from the test server, but it hasn’t seemed to do anything. The theme and plugins uploaded, but none of the media library transferred. I can verify in my FTP program that the files did transfer over, but Wordpress isn’t registering them.
Also, as I expected I’m just at the theme’s default starting design. I had a fair amount of customization done on the test server. Is there a way to transfer it, and the page content over? If not, I’ll need to get access to my test server’s version again.
Right now, I can’t access the original site. I looked at Duplicator and did get to downloading, but uploading was where I became unsure of what I was doing.
I gained access to my test server by editing the wp-congig.php an then just did copy and paste from the development site to the public one. Fortunately, it’s a small site with only 10 pages and all static, but it still took most of the day.
If any fellow newbie Wordpress server transfer persons come across this thread, I suggest research more before doing anything. It is much different than simply transferring a site on the same server to a new folder as I have done before.