This won’t apply to all installs (for instance this may not work with multi-site WP – idk), but might help you if you’re having trouble using the SiteGround WordPress Automatic Migrator tool with a basic site on Shared Go Daddy Plesk web hosting.
What happened to me was I couldn’t get past this popup in the Migrator tool:
“Transfer cannot be initiated due to permissions error.
For the purposes of this transfer we need to create temporary files on your current hosting account. Please fix your files permissions at your current host and make sure your wp-content folder is writable. Files should be set to 644 and folders to 755.”
In an exercise in futility I tried to change the permissions on the files and whatnot but shared sites don’t get much love from the hosts. So I gave up and manually moved it.
Here’s what I did and what might work for you.
- Make sure your current site is on the latest WP and plugins all updated. If you have tech problems with your site other than the permissions issue then you’ll want to try to resolve that first I think.
- Save old site
- Copy your wp-content folder to your local computer (I used FTP to transfer it)
- While that’s going, go to Go Daddy and open up Plesk Admin. Click on Databases, then the Export Dump link under the entry for your WP site db. Save that to your local computer.
- Copy your wp-config.php file to local computer along with any other loose files you might need from the root.
- Setup new site
- In SiteGround, install a new WP site. I chose not to install their starter tools.
- Once installed, goto Site>MySQL and under the Actions … pick Import Database Dump. Import your db dump to this db.
- With the dump in, copy your locally saved wp-content folders over to the SiteGround wp-content folder. I used the Site>File Manager tool to upload one by one and I kept my eye on the file permissions as they copied over, but all was well.
- Copy the new wp-config.php file that SG created to the local computer.
- Compare old wp-config.php to new default wp-config.php and adjust new.
- This may be critical as you might have made changes to the old file that you need brought over. I ended up changing the new file to use table prefix of ‘wp_’ because that’s what my Go Daddy export dump tables used and I didn’t feel like renaming them.
- Use Site>File Manager to upload your edited new wp-config.php file. Overwrite the SG one.
- Adjust your DNS. You can tell Go Daddy to use the SiteGround NameServers, or point www requests to the SG hosting account. It takes some time to propagate.
- Test any contact forms or other important site features.
- Take a new Backup of your site once you know it’s working properly.
That’s about it. Don’t forget to setup HTTPS (Security>SSL Manager). Once ready, you can enforce HTTPS through the SiteGround plugin “SG Optimizer”. That tool is also useful for helping your site load faster. I think the default for SG is to Autoupdate, so check WordPress>Autoupdate to adjust those settings. Maybe you want to move your domain to SG too? You could also drop the tables with SG’s default jhv_ prefix if you want maximum db cleanliness. There’s probably other stuff I’m forgetting. You can bleep boop in the comments.
