Tag Archives | Closer Look

How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 1 of 2

How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 1 of 2

This is a two part article describing how to move and set up a purchased WordPress website on your hosting server. The first part explains why you may want to purchased a WordPress site, how to transfer the domain and setting up the domain on your hosting server. Part two will take a closer look on how to install the websites database and configure some important WordPress settings.

Have you ever tried moving and setting up a purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server. In case you purchased an existing WordPress website and domain and has no clue on how to move and set up WordPress website on my Hostgator hosting account, read on…

The reason you may not want to setup your own WordPress website from scratch may be because you want to speed up implementation time and take advantage of the fact that the domain has already some age and AdSense monetization working. So you would only have to use your SEO experience to improve Search Engine ranking for the niche keywords.

Lets take a real example but change the names. Bob is the guy who purchased the domain and blog and the lady, lets name her Maria, that had sold Bob the domain and corresponding WordPress website told him she would send him all the information needed, but what Bob received were two zipped backup files, one with the database sql import file and the other was the WordPress domain directory. The only indications regarding setting up the WordPress website Bob got were that he had to upload the files to his server. Was this all he needed to do? What do you think?

Even though WordPress is very easy to install and manage, moving an existing WordPress Website to your hosting server should be a little more complex than that. So Bob thought that there must be more to it, especially as the MySQL database file had another database prefix, which is usually your hosting account ID. The format is something like MYHOSTID_MYDBNAME; so let’s name Maria’s database file maria89_wpbd123.sql. Bob’s Database prefix is bob58.

I know that when you restore a MySQL database in cpanel that it takes the sql file name to import the tables it into the same-named database, or creates a new one. Bob tried it out and as a result a MySQL database named bob58_maria89wpbd123 was created. The database restore had stripped out the underscore and added Bob’s database prefix. Not very nice:-(

Bob then wrote Maria back asking for more details, and whether there were any specifics that he needed to take into account for moving, setting up or configuring her specific the WordPress website. She apologized and replied that she did not know how to handle this and suggested having a live chat with my hosting support provider. Maria probably thought that moving a WordPress website from one hosting server to another would be as easy as she initially said, so Bob could not count on her and did not insist futher. Bob’s hosting provider has an outstanding support, so this was not a too bad idea, but then he decided that he would first have a go on his own.

So here comes how Bob proceeded for moving, setting up and configuring her WordPress website on his hosting server…There may be a quicker way, but it worked great for him and, in the end, if you know some simple but important details, the set up is pretty straight forward. Let’s first outline the basic steps required to transfer the domain to and set up the WordPress website on your hosting server.

Transfer the domain to your domain service provider
Set up the domain on your hosting server
Upload the WordPress database files
Configure your WordPress website

What do you need before you start?

WordPress Database MySQL restore file, DBprefix_DBname.sql
The complete WordPress website directory
The current WordPress admin userid and password

So let’s go a little more into detail on each step of the set up process…

1. Transferring the domain to my domain service provider

If you have also purchased the corresponding domain, the very first step is to get the domain transferred to your domain service provider. This will be done by the owner. If you have the same domain service provider, this is usually very simple; it’s called “”pushing””.

Unfortunately Maria had another domain service provider than Bob is using. So to make things easy he created a free account with her domain service provider and would take care of transferring the domain to his provider later on. Maria then “”pushed the domain into his account, Bob accepted it, and then pointed the domain to his DNS server. That was the easy part.

2. Setting up the domain on your hosting server

Bob has a hosting plan, which includes unlimited add-on domains. He logged into his cpanel and created the new add-on domain. This is pretty simple, so I won’t go into more details here. Bob did NOT need to create a WordPress Blog Website installation. This is done by restoring the WordPress database and uploading the WordPress website directory files he got to the domain’s root directory.

Bob then entered my new domain name in the internet browser’s address bar and saw that all was working so far, because he could see the empty cgi-bin directory that is created by default.

Now Bob could upload the WordPress website directory content to the domain directory, located below the root directory; in his case KingKoilMattresse.net. You can either do this via FTP or use the cpanel > Files > Backups wizard.

Bob reentered the domain name in the internet browser address bar and got the expected database connection error. First of all he did not have the DB installed yet and the connection information would be incorrect anyway. We will see how this part of our WordPress website setup can be achieved.

In the final part of the article we will have a closer look on how to Upload the WordPress Database files and Configuring your WordPress Website.

0

How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 2 of 2

How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 2 of 2

In the fist part of the article I described why Bob purchased the WordPress website, how to transfer the domain and the setting up of the domain on his hosting server. Part two will take a closer look on how to install the WordPress websites database and configure some important WordPress Website settings.

1. Upload the WordPress Database files

Let’s break this part down into 3 simple steps:

a) Create the WordPress Database and access information

b) Modify the WordPress Database content

b) Upload the WordPress Database (cpanel)

a) Create the WordPress Database and access information (cpanel)

You could restore the database directly, but for this exercise Bob will also explain why he created the WordPress database himself. So here comes the tricky part. When you want to access the WordPress website, it will first try to connect to the WordPress database. The corresponding access information is stored in the wp-config.php file, located in the root directory of the new domain. You can look it up in the WordPress directory files you got. Therefore, you will need to change the following three variables inside the wp-config.php file:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘bob55_ akkingb’);

/** database username */

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘bob55_ akdbadm’);

/** database password */

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘xxxxxxxxxx’);

The DB_PASSWORD parameter I got is encrypted and of no use to me, therefore the connection will fail. To get around this problem bob will show you a little trick; Bob reused an existing user (and password) already assigned to another WordPress Database.

First he created the WordPress database, akkingb (in cpanel > Databases > MySql Databases) and added the EXISTING user to the new database(Scroll down to MySQL Users and add the user bob55_ akdbadm to the database he just created, bob55_ akkingb, and assign ALL PRIVILEGES.

Now you only needed modify DB_NAME parameter, copy the values for DB_USER and ‘DB_PASSWORD from the wp-config.php file of your EXISTING WordPress Blog, and the connection will work perfectly;-)

So, download or extract the wp-config.php file for your new WordPress blog, change the parameters and upload it again.

b) Modify the WordPress Database content

There is some information in the WordPress Website that you can either modify later on, when you have managed to access your new WordPress blog or change it directly in the WordPress Database file. I prefer to do the latter, as it is quite simple and a nice time saver when configuring the WordPress Website.

There are a few generic values that are used in diverse places so if you do a find/replace (all) it’s a matter of minutes to get this done. I will tell you what tables are affected, so you know where to look and change it manually, but you can simply do a global change too:

wp_options table – Change values of:

– ‘admin_email’, –> your email.)

– Path prefixes: home/uuuuuuuu/public_html –> home/bob55/public_html

wp_users table: Change value of user_email field for the admin user so you will be able to have the password reset send to your email

That’s it!:-) The user_email is especially helpful if you do not know the WordPress website’s admin password. Simply request the password to be reset and you will get the password send to the email you chose;-)

c) Upload the WordPress Database (cpanel)

The important point here is to name the WordPress database sql file correctly. When restoring via the cpanel it will use the database according to the WordPress database sql file name. Do NOT add a database prefix, as this will be assigned automatically, and should be your hosting server ID; in Bob’s case, bob55. Hence, Bob named his file akkingb.sql, and the resulting complete database name will be bog55_ akkingb.

Bob had problems with WordPress Database restores when the file was not zipped in the correct format. The restore either did not run at all or broke at any point. Therefore it’s a good idea to get the free Gzip file compression utility. For more information go to gzip.org. The syntax is “”C:Program FilesGnuWin32bingzip.exe”” DBname.sql”” and this will convert the DBname.sql into a DBname.sql.gz file.

To restore the WordPress Database, in cpanel, go the Files > Backup Wizard, select “”Restore”” > MySQL Databases, locate your local restore file, akkingb.sql.gz and click “”Restore””. Now a new browser window will open up and the DB restore should start within seconds.

You know that the restore should have terminated correctly if you see the whole WordPress Database file on this page. You can verify the DB creation also through the cpanel > Databases > Php Admin panel. All your databases are listed on the left hand side.

We are almost done!:-). You should now be able to see your new blog and enter the admin panel yourdomain/wp-admin.

2. Configuring your WordPress Website

Any WordPress Blog configuration is different, but following letsl name just some of the WordPress Website settings..

* WordPress SETTINGS*

General:

Membership: Anyone can register
Timezone
Writing:

Remote Publishing: set both values active if you want to use external publishing tools
Privacy: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati)
Permalinks: you may want to change to i.e. /%category%/%postname%/ OR /%postname%.html, or any other values you use in your other blogs
All In One SEO Plugin

Use noindex for Categories: false
Use noindex for Archives: true
* WordPress PLUGINS*

Akismet Configuration: Enter YOUR Akismet API Key
Remove or add any other Plugins
*OTHER setting and configurations*

Copy your robots.txt to root folder or install the KB Robots.txt plugin
Monetizeation like AdSense, Amazon, will require even editing he corresponding theme files or configuration through plugins,…
That’s it, your WordPress Website has been moved and setup on your hosting server:-). To see the life example, go to kingkoilmattresses.net.

0