Posted on 6 November, 2016

This tutorial will show you how to move a Joomla site to a new server

While installing Joomla to your Ausweb hosting account can be simply done using Fantastico Deluxe, there are some occasions where you want to transfer an existing Joomla site to your Ausweb hosting account. This may be because you already have a Joomla site hosted elsewhere and are changing hosting providers or you have a Joomla site that you have developed on a test server.

The process involves 3 steps

1. Upload your existing Joomla site files to your hosting account.
2. Export (or dump) your existing MySQL database, then create a new database and import the data.
3. Change your Joomla configuration settings.

To view our Joomla demo site with a custom template installed, please click on the thumbnail to the right. The site also includes other customizations made by our development team including Simple Image Gallery, which is a great way to show off images and create photo galleries withing page content.

Uploading Files

There are 2 ways to go about uploading the files. You can use FTP to upload all the Joomla files to your hosting account, but as there are 1000’s of files that make up a Joomla site, this can be a long tedious process.

The better option is to compress all the files and folders into a .zip or .gz file, this file can be uploaded to your hosting account and then unpacked/unziped/extracted depending on the file format. Login to cPanel for you hosting account an go to File Manager.

1. Upload the zipped file to your public_html (Main directory, subdirectory or subdomain) directory in File Manager, or use FTP (upload as binary).
2. Click on the file name (not the icon this time) to select the file. A gz file
   
3. Look at the menu on the right side. Click the link which says Extract File Contents. Extracting/unzipping/unpacking
   
4. All files are unpacked, unzipped and placed in the same relationship as packaged. All folder names and contents the same.

Now that all files and folders are uploaded we need to check that file and folder permissions are correct. There are a number of folders that must be writable for Joomla to function. You can change folder and file permissions using either FTP or cPanel file manager.

To change the permission of a file or folder in cPanel’s File Manager

1. Select the file or folder you wish to modify on the left.

2. Click “Change Permission” link from the upper right corner.

3. Set the options as shown below or type “755” then click “Change”

The permissions need to be checked and changed, if necessary, to “755” for all folders listed below.

administrator/backups/
administrator/components/
administrator/modules/
administrator/templates/
cache/
components/
images/
images/banners/
images/stories/
language/
mambots/
mambots/content/
mambots/editors/
mambots/editors-xtd/
mambots/search/
mambots/system/
media/
modules/
templates/

Create Database and Import Joomla Data

Modify Configuration File

The last step is to modify your Joomla configuration.php file to suit your new hosting and database. Below is an example configuration file showing the changes that are required. You will need to edit the file configuration.php which is found in the main directory of your Joomla site. You can either modify the file on your PC using a text editor, or modify the file in cPanel File Manager by selecting the file then clicking “Edit File” on the top right section of File Manager.

$mosConfig_MetaAuthor = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_MetaDesc = ‘Joomla – the dynamic portal engine and content management system’;
$mosConfig_MetaKeys = ‘Joomla, joomla’;
$mosConfig_MetaTitle = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_absolute_path = ‘/home/user/public_html/’; * Change this to suit your server path
$mosConfig_admin_expired = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_allowUserRegistration = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_back_button = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_cachepath = ‘/home/user/public_html/cache’; * Change this to suit your server path
$mosConfig_cachetime = ‘900’;
$mosConfig_caching = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_db = ‘dbname’; * This is the name of the database created in the previous step
$mosConfig_dbprefix = ‘jos_’;
$mosConfig_debug = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_dirperms = ”;
$mosConfig_editor = ‘tinymce’;
$mosConfig_enable_log_items = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_enable_log_searches = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_enable_stats = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_error_message = ‘This site is temporarily unavailable.
Please notify the System Administrator’;
$mosConfig_error_reporting = ‘-1’;
$mosConfig_favicon = ‘favicon.ico’;
$mosConfig_fileperms = ”;
$mosConfig_fromname = ”;
$mosConfig_frontend_login = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_frontend_userparams = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_gzip = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_helpurl = ‘http://help.joomla.org’;
$mosConfig_hideAuthor = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hideCreateDate = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hideEmail = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hideModifyDate = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hidePdf = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hidePrint = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_hits = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_host = ‘localhost’;
$mosConfig_icons = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_item_navigation = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_lang = ‘english’;
$mosConfig_lifetime = ‘900’;
$mosConfig_link_titles = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_list_limit = ’30’;
$mosConfig_live_site = ‘http://yourdomain.com; * This is the URL of your Joomla site
$mosConfig_locale = ‘en_GB’;
$mosConfig_mailer = ‘mail’;
$mosConfig_mailfrom = ‘[email protected];
$mosConfig_multilingual_support = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_multipage_toc = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_offline = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_offline_message = ‘This site is down for maintenance.
Please check back again soon.’;
$mosConfig_offset = ‘-10’;
$mosConfig_offset_user = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_pagetitles = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_password = ‘password’; * This is the password for the database created in the previous step
$mosConfig_readmore = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_secret = ‘qYwasdloRtdEwsa’;
$mosConfig_sef = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_sendmail = ‘/usr/sbin/sendmail’;
$mosConfig_session_life_admin = ‘1800’;
$mosConfig_session_type = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_shownoauth = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_sitename = ‘My Joomla Site’;
$mosConfig_smtpauth = ‘0’;
$mosConfig_smtphost = ‘localhost’;
$mosConfig_smtppass = ”;
$mosConfig_smtpuser = ”;
$mosConfig_uniquemail = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_user = ‘dbuser’; * This is the database user created in the previous step
$mosConfig_useractivation = ‘1’;
$mosConfig_vote = ‘0’;
setlocale (LC_TIME, $mosConfig_locale);
?>

Once you have saved and uploaded the file configuration.php you will now be able to access your new Joomla site.

Joomla! is the perfect Content Management System for managing and developing your website with one of AUSWEB’s cPanel Hosting plans.