Transferring a site from one host to another

I am new to the website flipping buisness so I am sorry if this is a very basic question.
I recently sold a site on Flippa. The guy who bought it from me asked me to push the domain name to his account and then transfer the sites files to his hosting.

Of course I was able to figure out how to push the domain name.
but I ran into some serious trouble when it came time for the file transfer. I essentially was able to transfer template over but I couldnt figure out how to get all of my SQL files to transfer.

So I essentially aquired his password and had to write all of the content(luckily I had it saved) into the wordpress.

I constantly see these sites on flippa sell like hotcakes I am just wondering what is the most efficent method to transfer a website to someone elses hosting.

If anyone can help I would relly appreciate if they could outline how to do it so I dont run into this problem again.

This really is a major issue with Wordpress. I learned how to transfer sites by following one of the many methods out there and practising on my own sites. As soon as I had it figured out 100% I made a video of the process and gave all buyers access. Lately buyers began to have issues with this method I was using. I think it was because of some update.

There is absolutely no way anybody can outline how to do it here as there are too many variations and possibilities. I dont think you should have went through with an auction without being totally clear on what you were doing as this is sure to lead to problems down the line if this is your approach to doing business.

You have some options for the future. Pick some of the many methods out there and pratcice on your own sites. Pay somebody to write up a pdf instruction manual that you can give to buyers or pay somebody to make a video tutorial that you can give to buyers. The problem will be when a buyer makes a mistake or has a tech issue and comes to you for help.

Wordpress really is a ballbreaker. I have a reliable tech guy on hand that I refer buyers to and I dont sell low end wordpress sites anymore to save me from all the above issues. If I sell a high end site I'll just pay my tech guy straight out to transfer.

Good Luck.

Yea I actually was looking for someone to just help outline how to transfer SQL files to another host

I got the ftp upload stuff down its just the SQL I had the trouble with

Go and find a cheap reliable tech guy that can assist you with issues like this there are plenty available. Its not practical to give out this sort of tech advice on a forum.

If its cpanel to cpanel, directadmin to directadmin etc it is extremely easy.

If its cPanel on both hosts, you ask the person to whom you sold the site to ask his hosting company to do a server to server transfer. They will need your username and password along with the domain name and they can stick the details into WHM and off it goes.

If its DA both sides, just do a DA backup on yours and send the tar file (I think its a tar) to your customer who will have to get it restored through their control panel.

IF there is no control panel involved, I normally use phpMyAdmin to dump the database (as I am lazy, you can do this via command line) and tar up the site files.

You can do cPanel to DA via a script, but its not guaranteed althought its never failed for me.

DA to cPanel is a bit of a bugger and I normally carry on as if there was no control panel and dump everything by hand, then reupload and DB import.

SSH the Tar command and wget or SCP commands are your friends when it comes to transfers, and as far as transferring SQL its called a dump

from command line in ssh
1. mysqldump -u username -p database_name > FILE.sql
2. Press Enter
3. You will be prompted for a password
4. Type in the password for the username and press Enter.

to import it on destination server

Upload the sql file, ssh to the directory that you uploaded the SQL file to and do the following

1. mysql -u username -p database_name < FILE.sql
2. Press Enter
3. You will be prompted for a password
4. Type in the password for the username and press Enter.

hope this helps.