One question we get a lot is, “Can I migrate my site to Flywheel myself?” and the answer is yes! We’d love to move your site over to Flywheel for free, but if you are the do-it-yourself type, this article is for you.
If your site exists solely on your local machine, we suggest migrating your site using the free plugin BackWPup.
If you’d prefer not to use a plugin, or you have your site files ready to go and just need to import them to Flywheel, we recommend migrating your site to Flywheel manually.
1. Install and launch Flywheel Migrations on the source site
2. Enter your email address
3. Create a Flywheel site for your migration
4. Enter your Flywheel site’s dashboard URL
5. Enter your Flywheel site’s URL
6. Enter your Flywheel username and password
7. Enter Privacy Mode credentials
8. Enter optional information
9. Click the Migrate button
10. Review your migrated site
11. Take your migrated site live
If you already have a Flywheel destination site for your migration, you can skip this step.
_staging
to the end of the Dashboard URL.https://
to the beginning of the URL. For example, if there are plugins installed that force loading via HTTPS.This will be the same username and password that you use to log into Flywheel. Note, this may be different than the WordPress username and password for your site!
Not sure if your Flywheel site has Privacy Mode enabled? Over on the site’s Overview tab on the Flywheel dashboard, you’ll see the Privacy Mode box on the right sidebar. If this is currently set to “On” (all Demo Sites have this on by default), you will want to copy the username and password credentials over to Flywheel Migrations.
Here’s an example of what your completed migration form should look like.
If you’d like to migrate files outside of the wp-content folder, migrate additional database tables, or if your source site is password protected, choose the relevant options.
wp-content
directory. If there are any other directories in the site root you need to migrate, select Yes. From there, you’ll be prompted to select from a list.dbprefix
are migrated by default with some exceptions. Those exceptions include tables from plugins like Wordfence, which are known to cause problems during the migration and have transient data. However, if they are needed, you are able to select from the dropdown of tables available.You can now sit back and relax while our Fly robots migrate your site! Progress can be monitored on the next screen, or you can close the page and wait for the completion email to be sent to your inbox.
Once the migration has wrapped up, click through the destination Flywheel-hosted site and make sure those robots moved everything over ok. If anything is amiss, get in touch via chat or support ticket, or undo it all by restoring from a backup.
If you notice that your migration has failed or want to review the migration details, JSON formatted migration logs can be accessed in the _flyprivate
folder of the site (via SFTP).
These logs contain the following information:
Migration start time
Source site
Destination URL
Destination hostname
Total files
Synced files
Ignored files
Total tables
Ignored tables
Synced tables
Synced size
Ignored size
WP version
PHP version
Absolute path
Content path
Plugin info (plugin version, active/inactive status)
Theme info (theme version, active/inactive status)
Migration finish time
Database modifications (start and finish time)
Status codes
When you’re ready to take your site live, follow this nifty guide to point your domain to your newly migrated site on Flywheel!
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