Creating and migrating a site in ISPmanager Print

Moving an existing site onto the server involves two separate parts: the files and the database. This article covers both through the panel; for large sites, FTP and the command line are faster — see FTP access and FTP users in ISPmanager.

Uploading the site files

1. Go to Sites, select the domain and open its directory (file manager).
2. Delete the default index.html created with the site — otherwise it may be shown instead of your own home page.
3. Click Upload and choose either an archive or the individual files. Archives in zip, gzip, bzip, tar and tar.gz formats are supported.
4. If you uploaded an archive, select it and click Extract.

Uploading a single archive and extracting it on the server is far quicker than uploading files one by one, and a dropped connection does not leave you guessing which files arrived.

Check where the files ended up. Many archives contain a top-level folder, so extracting produces httpdocs/mysite/index.php instead of httpdocs/index.php — and the site then shows a directory listing or an error rather than your home page. If that has happened, select all the files inside the nested folder, use Copy and tick the option to move them, and put them in the site root.

Importing the database

1. Go to Tools → Databases.
2. Select an existing database, or create a new one first.
3. Click Upload and choose the dump. Accepted formats are .sql, .sql.gz, .sql.gzip, .sql.bzip2 and .sql.zip.
4. Click OK. The file is uploaded and the database is restored from it.

If the dump is already on the server, use Local dump and give the path to the file instead of uploading it again.

A compressed dump uploads several times faster than an uncompressed one, and large uploads through a browser can hit the upload size or execution time limit — so compress the dump before uploading it.

Connecting the site to the database

After importing, update your CMS configuration file with the database name, user and password on this server — they are almost never the same as on the old hosting. The file is usually wp-config.php for WordPress, configuration.php for Joomla, or .env for framework-based applications.

A site that shows a database connection error after a move has this as its cause in the great majority of cases.

Testing before switching the domain

Do not change the domain's DNS until you have confirmed the site works here. Until the DNS is switched, visitors continue to reach the old hosting, so you can take as long as you need.

Once you are satisfied, point the domain at this server — see Installing and configuring a DNS server in ISPmanager if the DNS is served from here, or change the A record at whoever hosts your DNS.

Keep the old hosting running for a few days afterwards. DNS changes propagate gradually, so some visitors will still be reaching the old server for a while — and if something turns out to be missing, you still have the original.

Do not forget the mail

Moving the site does not move the mail. If your mail is hosted with the old provider and you change the domain's DNS, mail stops arriving unless the MX records are handled deliberately. Decide before the switch whether the mail is moving too — see Creating a mail domain in ISPmanager.

If anything goes wrong during the move, open a ticket from your client area describing what stage you reached.