How to Migrate Your Wordpress Blog From BlueHost to MediaTemple

Bluehost sucks, there, I said it. Did you just have your first frontpage Digg and are experiencing server issues? Bluehost isn’t a completely bad host. My blog is online now, but it definitely had a lot of downtime yesterday, as a result, me and my users saw this error ‘This Account Has Exceeded its CPU Quota’.

Whether you can palate having your server down when you’re experiencing a huge traffic spike from Digg is up to you, but I know I’m switching from Bluehost over to MediaTemple ASAP.

In fact, I actually planned on upgrading my Bluehost ‘CPU’ but was told that it can take “up to 2 weeks” and the only way for me to upgrade my account is to submit a ‘work ticket’ and wait for them to get around to it.

On MediaTemple, the servers are designed for bursts of traffic, and upgrading is easy — just spend more cash For people checking out MediaTemple, here is a code for 15% off “kirupa07″, it gave me $30 off, which is nice.

Migrate from Bluehost to MediaTemple

So here are the steps to get your blog, and all your posts out of Bluehost and onto MediaTemple or another hosting service of your choice.

Change your DNS Nameservers

Take your new settings from MediaTemple or your host and throw them into your own host, Bluehost.

Insert them into the old host, and make sure to save the settings when you’re done.

Export Your Old Database

Go to PHPMyAdmin in your old Bluehost cPanel (control panel).

Click on your database on the left hand side. I have a couple different WordPress installs, so for me, I just look for the one with the biggest size (39).

Now we want to get the data out, so click on EXPORT.

On the export screen, make sure you have selected ‘SQL’ from the left hand column and make sure your settings follow these shots.

Now we want to save our database, make sure it’s zipped.

Install WordPress on MediaTemple

The great thing about both Bluehost and MediaTemple are their 1-click installs. Head over to your domain, and click on the 1-click install.

Now just click on the WordPress icon, and hit okay on any “this may delete your site, etc” errors.

Now head over to your database, from the same page as the 1-click applications, and it’ll bring you to manage your databases.

Click the ‘admin’ and it’ll bring you to the familiar PHPMyAdmin.

Now we want to IMPORT a new database, so click that link.

Click on the browse to locate your database file (it’ll end in .SQL) and make sure to unzip the contents from the export first. Once you’re uploaded, hit go (it’s like save).