Beginner Wordpress Help

Superficial · 17 Mar 2017 at 14:30

Hi there,

A friend has a Wordpress website for which the original designer and person hosting is no longer in the country / contactable. Logging into the hosting admin panel is not possible as they have never had the un/pw for the hosting. Nor the hosting control panel url.

We do, however, have access to the FTP and all website files which have been downloaded.

we also now have access to the wp control panel

in the long run the website will be replaced but it's fine in its current form for a while.

can we just re-host the files and make do? If so what hosting package would we need?

If that's impossible what is the usual process for backing up and moving a wp site to new host? is there a guide that anyone knows of?

Thanks for reading.

Superficial · 17 Mar 2017 at 15:36

markeh said:
Hi,

You'll need database access, do you have that?

Hi there,

Thanks for replying.

There's an update - we do actually have access to the wp control panel but still no access to the hosting control panel.

is there anything I can do from the wp control panel?

Superficial · 17 Mar 2017 at 16:58

touch said:
You can install plugins which download a backup of the database. Make sure it gives you a .sql file or a .tar/.gz type archive which you can extract a .sql file from.

You can then upload the database backup to a new host, upload the files you have and edit the wp-config.php file with connection details for the new database.

hi there,

Thanks for this - I'm looking at updraft plus free edition but if anyone knows a better backup plugin that would be great.

Superficial · 17 Mar 2017 at 17:00

kwerk said:
See if there's an option to export the db from wp. Otherwise you might be able to upload phpmyadmin via ftp and use the db info from the WP config file.

Hi Yes there is:

Tools > Export

Would selecting "all content" and then downloading that file be all I need?

EDIT: this produces an xml file that I would then upload to another wordpress install. Is this as good as a DB backup?

many thanks

Superficial · 19 Mar 2017 at 21:28

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your replies - I took Touch's advice and downloaded a plug in (updraft plus free) that has given me the files in the format .gz

Things are on hold, hopefully, until tomorrow when my friend purchases the appropriate hosting package and I'll upload and see what we see.

RE: the XML - I have it anyway but it never looked substantive enough.

Thanks again

- George