Migrating your WordPress site to Flashcloud

Three ways to bring a WordPress site to Flashcloud. Easiest is letting our team handle it; fastest is a migration plugin; most controlled is a manual migration.

Easiest: Free Transfer service

Tell us about your old site, we move it. See Free site transfer from your old host.

• ✅ No technical work on your side.
• ✅ Free.
• ⚠️ Takes 1–3 business days.

For most sites, this is the right path. Our team has done thousands of migrations and handles edge cases (custom configurations, large databases, hard-to-export hosts) better than off-the-shelf tools.

Fastest: Migration plugin

The do-it-yourself path:

All-in-One WP Migration

Most popular. Free tier supports sites up to 512MB; paid extension removes the limit.

1. On the old site: Install All-in-One WP Migration → Export → Choose "File" destination → Download the .wpress file.
2. On Flashcloud: Install WordPress (use our install wizard on a fresh hosting account or subdomain).
3. Install All-in-One WP Migration on the new site → Import → upload the .wpress file.
4. The plugin overwrites the new install with your old site's data.
5. After import, log in with your old site's credentials (not the ones from the install wizard).

Total time: 30 minutes for a typical site, longer for huge ones.

Duplicator

Alternative migration plugin. Similar workflow:

1. On the old site: Install Duplicator → Create a Package → Download the archive and installer.
2. On Flashcloud: Upload the archive and installer to a fresh hosting account.
3. Run the installer at https://yourdomain.com/installer.php.
4. The installer extracts and configures everything.

Both plugins work. All-in-One is simpler; Duplicator is more configurable.

Most controlled: Manual migration

For when you want to know exactly what's happening:

1. Backup the old site:
   • Files: download wp-content/, wp-config.php, .htaccess via FTP.
   • Database: export via phpMyAdmin → Quick → SQL.
2. Set up new site on Flashcloud:
   • Install WordPress via our install wizard at the destination domain or subdomain.
   • Open phpMyAdmin → drop the new database (we'll replace it).
3. Import the old database:
   • Open phpMyAdmin → create a new database with the same name (or import into the existing one).
   • Import the SQL file you exported.
4. Update site URLs in the database (if you're moving to a different URL):
   • Use a "Better Search Replace" plugin or manual SQL: UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = 'https://newdomain.com' WHERE option_name = 'siteurl'; (and home).
5. Upload wp-content/ to the new site via FTP.
6. Update wp-config.php with the new database credentials (if changed).

Verify the site loads, content matches, plugins activate.

DNS cutover

When the new site is verified working:

1. Lower TTLs on your DNS records 24 hours before cutover.
2. Switch nameservers to Flashcloud (or update A records). See Pointing your domain to your hosting.
3. Wait for propagation — typically minutes to hours.
4. Verify by checking the site loads from multiple locations.

During propagation, some visitors hit the old site, others hit the new. Both are running, so there's no actual downtime — just a brief period where traffic is split.

Common migration gotchas

• Plugin conflicts — some plugins behave differently on different hosts. Test thoroughly post-migration.
• Permalink rewrites — after import, visit Settings → Permalinks → Save to regenerate .htaccess.
• Image URLs hardcoded in content — use Better Search Replace to update old URLs to new.
• Cached references — clear all caches (server-level + plugin-level) post-migration.
• Email — domain transfers don't move email accounts. Move emails separately or use Google Workspace.
• SSL — auto-issues within 5 minutes once DNS points correctly.

Big sites

For sites larger than 5GB or with complex custom configurations:

• Free Transfer is the right path — our team has tools for big migrations.
• Sequential migration — files first (uploaded to new host while DNS still points to old), then database last-minute, minimizing data loss.
• Database replication during cutover — for e-commerce sites that can't afford to lose orders during the migration window.

For 100GB+ migrations, we typically schedule a brief maintenance window and do everything atomically.

Power-user note

For developer-friendly migrations, wp-cli has migration commands:

# On old host
wp db export old-db.sql

# On new host
wp db import old-db.sql
wp search-replace olddomain.com newdomain.com

Combined with rsync for files, this is the fastest manual migration path.