Wp engine automatic migration

July 6, 2021 . 6 MIN READ

https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engine-automatic-migration/

HASSLE-FREE AUTOMATED MIGRATION

On this page: Migrating your site has never been easier – we’ll walk you through the basic steps needed in order to migrate your site from your previous host to WP Engine just by installing one plugin!

Tags: migration, video

Updated: October 13th, 2016

It looks like you are ready to move your site over to the WP Engine platform. Our automated migration tool makes moving your WordPress install to WP Engine extremely easy! Let’s get started on how to use the tool.

If you run into any problems, please check out our Common Errors section further down this article.

Download WP Engine Migration Plugin
You will need to download and install the plugin on your WordPress install that exists on your current hosting provider. You can find the plugin on the WordPress Plugin Repository. You can search for the plugin in your WordPress dashboard by searching for “WP Engine Migration”.

Once the plugin is installed, activate the plugin so that it can be used.
Find the Information You Need
You will need 5 pieces of information to complete the migration:

Your Email
Destination URL
WP Engine SFTP Host
WP Engine SFTP Username
WP Engine SFTP Password

The Email you supply the plugin will be the email we use to communicate updates about your migration.

The Destination URL you use will be the URL we migrate the site to on WP Engine. We highly recommend migrating to your temporary WP Engine URL (yourinstallname.wpengine.com) first.

WP Engine SFTP Details are the connection details the plugin needs to move all your content to our platform. We have made this extremely easy to retrieve. You will have received an email from us titled WP Engine New Site Confirmation. This will contain a link that says “Migrate Your Site Now”. Click that link and it will show you the SFTP Details you need to supply to the plugin.

Note: If you did not receive an email with the Migrate Your Site Now link, you can still find the SFTP details you need by visiting https://my.wpengine.com/installs/install-name/migrate-my-site where install-name is the name of the install you want to migrate your site to on WP Engine.

Start Your Migration

You should now have the plugin installed and activated on your current WordPress host and all the information you need to start the migration.

Go to the WP Engine Automated Migration tab in your WordPress Dashboard. Here you will find several text boxes that we will use during your migration. We strongly recommend that the Destination URL is your temporary WP Engine URL, which you will find in our New Site Confirmation Email we send you. This will allow you to visit your temporary WP Engine URL to see if the migration completed successfully.

Input the information into the plugin and press migrate! The plugin will then forward you to a blogvault.net page that will give you real time updates of your migration. If you see any issues, please refer to our Common Errors section further down this article. You will receive an email once the migration completes.

Finish Your Migration
You should have received an email saying your migration has completed. If you used the temporary WP Engine URL, you can visit that URL now in your browser to verify the site moved over properly.

If the site successfully moved over, you will need to re-run the migration one more time with the SAME email and SFTP credentials. Change the Destination URL this time to your live domain. For example, if your WordPress site is at mydomain.com, you would then put mydomain.com in the Destination URL (If your live domain hasn’t been added to the domains list in the User Portal, then please follow the instructions in the article below to “Add your domain to the WP Engine User Portal). Click migrate again and the tool will re-start the migration.

Note: The tool is smart enough to know that this is a second migration. The migration tool will not migrate everything again. However, it will pick up any file and database changes or additions and migrate them over. This results in a faster migration.
What’s Left to Do?
Now that the heavy lifting is done, you have a few small tasks to complete to officially be on WP Engine. All of these may not apply to your migration:

Add your domain to the WP Engine User Portal
Setup your redirects
Setup SSL
Update your DNS

Once the applicable step above are completed, you will be fully on WP Engine. Welcome to the family!

Common Errors
Here are a list of errors that the plugin will tell you if something goes wrong along with the solution:

Could not connect to server. Please check the address.
The SFTP credentials you provided are incorrect. You can verify that you are using the right SFTP credentials by visiting https://my.wpengine.com/installs/yourinstallname/migrate-my-site where yourinstallnameis replaced by the install name you would like to migrate your site to.
That email is already in use.
You are using an old version of the plugin. Please update or re-download the plugin from the WordPress.org plugin system.
Error! The URL specified is incorrect. Can you please check if your WP Engine account is configured with…
This means that the Destination URL you are using is not set up on the install you are trying to migrate the site too. Please readAdd your domain to the WP Engine User Portalto fix this issue.
White Screen with an “Unknown” Error
Don’t be afraid, your site is still up and running. This error is caused by the Cloudflare plugin. Please deactivate that plugin and continue with the migration. Once completed, you can re-activate it on WP Engine’s platform.
The plugin is asking me for an additional username and password. What do I do?
Your WP Engine install is password protected. This is the case for both transferrable installs and installs that you made password protected via the User Portal. Just input the username and password for the password protected site. You can find the username and password in the User Portal. Please visit our support article to learn more about Transferrable Installs.
Don’t change any setting in the WP Engine User Portal during the migration.
The Automated Migration plugin does a lot of proactive checks to ensure the migration is going smoothly. When settings change during the migration, this can trigger one of those checks to fail resulting in a failed migration.

Known Host Incompatibilities
After extensive testing, we have found a few hosts that the plugin can not migrate you away from. These hosts are, but not limited too:

com
Local Hosting Environments
Proprietary Hosting Providers (Wix.com, SquareSpace.com, and other similar companies)

Good news! Your site has completed its migration to WP Engine. We encourage you to check out your site athttp://chrissmithre.wpengine.com. Be sure to check your site carefully to ensure all data has been properly moved over. If you find that the migration of your site is incomplete, please reach out to your WP Engine Support Team by logging in to your User Portal.

Once you’re ready, go ahead and re-run the migration using the plugin. Use the same email and SFTP credentials, but change the Destination URL to your live domain and click migrate. The second migration will complete much faster.

Thanks!

Your WP Engine team