Notes on Wordpress Site Migration
Configure Your WebServer
Setup a lamp deployment
You can do it manually or just create a template from deploymwent manager.
apt install apache2
apt install ufw
apt install mariadb-server
mysql_secure_installation
apt install php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc php-soap php-intl php-zip
Enable the Rewrite Module
If you are setting up a fullstack lamp, this will be done automatically. But please make sure this is enabled. (By this we can utilize the WordPress permalink feature)
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Allowoverride
Enable .htaccess Overrides by editing the primary Apache configuration file. To allow .htaccess files, we need to set the AllowOverride directive within a Directory block pointing to our document root. Towards the bottom of the file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, add the following block:
<Directory /var/www/html/>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
(In our case I have used /web/mysite)
Enable Virtualhost
This is to host multiple sites on same server and this is so easy. Create a config file for your site (mysite.conf) under /etc/apache2/
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
ServerName mywebsite.com
ServerAlias www.mywebsite.com
DocumentRoot /web/mysite
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/mysite_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/mysite_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Verify your configuration
sudo apache2ctl configtest
Enable your website
This can be done at end as well, but you can do this now and check if site is working. And reload apache.
a2ensite mysite.conf
systemctl reload apache2
Configure Let’s Encrypt for SSL
## add below lines to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main
## update system
sudo apt update
## Install certbot
sudo apt install python-certbot-apache -t stretch-backports
## or
sudo apt install python-certbot-apache
## Obtaining an SSL Certificate
sudo certbot --apache -d example.com -d www.example.com
If Certbot is not working
wget https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto && chmod a+x certbot-auto
cd /etc/letsencrypt/
cp ~/certbot-auto .
./certbot-auto
Install and configure firewall
Install ufw or firewalld (firewall) depends on the OS.
## install firewall
sudo apt install ufw
## check status
sudo ufw status
## List the ufw application profiles
sudo ufw app list
## allow web traffic and ssh
sudo ufw allow 'WWW'
sudo ufw allow 'WWW Secure'
sudo ufw allow 'SSH'
sudo ufw allow 'OpenSSH'
## To allow all HTTP traffic you can remove WWW and add WWW Full
sudo ufw allow 'WWW Full'
sudo ufw delete allow 'WWW'
## enable ufw
sudo ufw enable
## check ufw status
sudo ufw status
Create the directory for website
mkdir /web/mysite
chown www-data:www-data /web/mysite
Configure Database
You need to create an admin user (for login purpose, instead of root), then a database for wordpress, an admin user for your wordpress database etc.
Login to mysql and configure user
Login with root password
$ mysql -u root -pPASSWORD
mysql>
Create an Admin user
This is to manange all databases udner mysql. (Instead of using root as login)
mysql> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'dbadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'dbpassword' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Reset root password
Update root user password and avoid default root password or blank root password.
mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass';
Create a Databse for wordpress
You may use the same old database name from old server if you want to keep same documents.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE wordpress101 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
Create an admin user for wordpress database
Create a new user for wordpress. (If you want to keep the same old wordpress db username and password, use it here)
mysql> GRANT ALL ON wordpress101.* TO 'wpdbadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'wpdbpassword';
Update database system
You now have a database and user account, made specifically for WordPress. We need to flush the privileges so that the current instance of MySQL knows about the recent changes we’ve made.
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Export your database and website files
Now we login to old server and export our database and website files (media, scripts, plugins etc)
Export Database
### from old server
$ mysqldump -u root -p old_databse |gzip > old_databse_20190104.gz
Backup website files in zip file
Let’s gzip all web folder into a single file for easy transfer.
$ cd /var/www/
$ tar -cv html | gzip > mywpsite.tar.gz
Copy databse and website backup to new server
scp user@old_server:/home/user/old_databse_20190104.gz .
scp user@old_server:/home/user/mywpsite.tar.gz .
Restore database on new server
### on new server
gunzip < old_databse_20190104.gz | mysql -u root -pMyPasswd wordpress101
Restore website files
### on new server
gunzip mywpsite.tar.gz
tar -xvf mywpsite.tar -C /web/pe/
Where -C is to point the destination directory.
Update and Verify your wp-config.php
Check your database name, username and password are properly configured.