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Migrating to GoDaddy Managed WordPress

If you’re trying to move to GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress hosting solution and you’ve tried the auto migration but it keeps failing here’s what you do next.

This article is provided with the intent of helping solve a very common issue. We do not endorse and advice against using GoDaddy’s “Managed WordPress” hosting products.

If you have NOT tried the auto migration, go here to try that first!

Side note: GoDaddy does offer a “tutorial” here, but just following it requires a level of difficulty.

The reason I don’t recommend doing a typical manual migration is because there are a couple files and database elements that are important to Managed WordPress, and it requires more skills.

My intent is to show you the easiest way to do this. No code, no downloading and exporting a bunch of files.

A Little Background

In 2016 GoDaddy acquired ManageWP, WordPress management software, with that acquisition came the integration with GoDaddy Pro.

What this means is that if you’re a Web Pro, you can signup for GoDaddy Pro for free and use all of the ManageWP features at a discounted price for all your GoDaddy hosted clients.

Now if you’re not a GoDaddy Pro you can still signup to use ManageWP directly and benefit from the same pricing available to GoDaddy Pro users.

If you’re not hosting your website with GoDaddy and migrating that way, you can still use ManageWP features, it will just cost you $2/month for the CloneMigrate feature.

Watch this video to see how simple MangeWP CloneMigrate is…

Let’s Get Started!

If you’re a Web Pro and you’re not a GoDaddy Pro, go signup now. If you’re not a Web Pro, and using it for one-time use or personal use only, go signup at ManageWP.

If you think this looks too overwhelming and you’d rather just have us do it for you, just click here to order a done-for-you migration. It will be done within 24-48 hours.

Phase 1: Setup Managed WordPress Hosting Account

1. Manage Your WordPress Websites

My Products GoDaddy

2. Click to Add a Site

Managed WordPress Hosting GoDaddy

3. Select an Available Credit and Click Next

GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting

4. Select “Building A New Site”, Click “Get Started”

5. Select “Use Temporary Domain”, Click Next

Managed WordPress Hosting Temp Domain

To complete the setup, there will be three more steps. You will be guided through them and told exactly what to do. I think you got it from here!

Phase 2: Now the Migration with ManageWP

Step 1: Add your sites to the ManageWP dashboard.

  1. Click on the plus icon in the top left of the screen
  2. Then click “Add WordPress Site”.
  1. In the Add new website options, select the option to enter your URL
  2. Then click “Add Website”
  1. After the site is added successfully you will see this message.
  2. Click on “Go to website dashboard”.

After you’ve completed the steps above for both sites.

Phase 3: Enable backups to enable the clone/migrate feature

Complete the steps below for the Source site only! The “Source Site” is the site you want to migrate.

From the dashboard you will first click on “Backups” in the sidebar on the left. Once on the backup page you will click “Activate Backups”

Click the green button to activate your Premium features.

Please note this will be free for all GoDaddy Hosted website, and cost $2/month for sites hosted outside of GoDaddy.

When connecting to GoDaddy hosted sites you will see this message below. Just click “Activate add-on” to confirm your selection.

With sites not hosted on GoDaddy you will be asked to enter credit card information to process the $2/month fee.

Once the add-on is activate you will be redirected to the backup page where you will see your first backup “in progress”. Once it is complete you will be able to proceed to step 3 and “clone” or migrate your website.

After you have done the above steps for the source site, continue with step 4 below.

Step 4: Clone (migrate) the Source Site to the new location

In the backups dashboard (get there by clicking “backups” in the sidebar on the left) in ManageWP click on “Clone”.

Select the first option to clone the site to an “Existing website in ManageWP”.

From the drop down box just select the domain for the other site you setup in GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting in step 1 above. Then click “Clone”.

You must confirm that you want to clone/migrate the site to this location because it will overwrite any existing content.

You will be able to watch the progress of your migration in real time, as displayed in the next two screens. The clone timeframe will differ depending on the size of your website.

Once the migration is complete you will see this message and be able to visit the site by clicking on the link.

Final Step

Confirm the migration has completed successfully by visiting the site and logging into WP Admin.

Once you’re sure it’s good to go, add you domain to the Manage WordPress Hosting account.

If the domain is not in the same GoDaddy account as the Manage WordPress Hosting, you will need to manually update the DNS.

Want me to do this for you?

If this seems too complicated or you just don’t want to mess with it. I’ll do it for you! Just click here to order a done-for-you migration. It will be done within 24-48 hours.

If you have questions be sure to use the comments below!

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