Wordpress Backup Help

First of all let me apologize if this is posted in the wrong section but I wasn't sure where something like this would go..

I have a fairly old WP site about 5 yrs and I want to take the content and move it to another host and possibly another domain. Forgive me because I have no idea about something like this. Is the actual content posts, pages etc data stored in the actual databases? or in my server directories where the wordpress site is hosted?

Is there a way that I can save all of the content in a file then take that file and import it to another site hosted somewhere else?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Okay... here is the layman's explanation:

Your WP site (or any site that uses a CMS platform) is composed of two things:
1) Your files (files that make up the design, functionality, etc.)
2) Your database (actual posts, pages, images, etc)

A common mistake is for someone to back up the files (maybe using an ftp program) and think that they have backed up everything. There are also plugins that only back up files or maybe they are intended to back up the files AND database, but somehow they don't.

The best solution is to hire someone to move everything for you and re-install them where you want. This is easy, but sometimes can get very complicated very fast.

We normally build our sites on a test server and then move them over to the 'real' location this way. Things can easily go wrong if you don't know what you are doing.

First, back up all the files via ftp. (This can also be done through the control panel either through File Manager or a Backup icon/wizard. I prefer ftp.)

Next, export the (correct) database by accessing your site via phpmyadmin directly. Don't attempt to do this if you don't know what you are doing. Little things can come into play. For example, if you export as gzip, you cannot import that directly into GoDaddy. That and a thousand other little things can happen, depending on your host.

Then import the files to the new location and import the database.

Last, you may have to alter the WP options table in the database to reference the right URL (that all depends)... and you may have to alter the wp-config file to reference the right host, database, and database user.

I know it all sounds complicated, so you really need to have someone do this for you... but perhaps you can watch them via screenshare and learn.

Now if you only wish to move content... WP has some great utilities for importing/exporting posts/pages to another blog. Just Google it.

Good luck.

As jakeblackhat said, this can get complicated fast, but if you know how to work with ftp and myPHPadmin, it's not really that difficult.

Wordpress themselves have good step by step instructions here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#Moving_WordPress_to_a_New_Server

As long as you do not change anything on the ORIGINAL server, then even if the new server install doesn't work, you can always just delete it and try again.

If any of those steps look like they are written in latin, then I definitely agree with jakeblackhat and suggest that you hire someone to do it for you.

A lot of hosting companies offer this as a free service on new accounts so that may help you out.

Dave

I think you can use backup buddy nulled version here. Backup through it and restore. Thats it.

mysqldump the db, tgz the home dir, move both files to new server, untar/gunzip the homd dir, import the db

peterchang said:

mysqldump the db, tgz the home dir, move both files to new server, untar/gunzip the homd dir, import the db

Click to expand...

Not that easy Peterchang, the OP stated he may want to move the blog to a new domain, in which case, he will definitely need to make some config changes too.

Once you hit wp-admin you can make the domain change there. this stuff is easy.
The problem will be db compatibility, if they move to a different version like 5.5