Explain website migration like I'm 5

I need to switch web hosts. I'm not paying the $300 Siteground wants for another year of service.

I'm fairly certain I'm going to bluehost, but I think that is beside the point.

What I want to happen: transfer my domain name, which I personally own, to the new host, as well as transfer, without breaking links, all my pictures. I want to scrap everything else on the site and start over. 

I run a WordPress install through siteground cpanel. I've downloaded everything as an extremely tiny xml file, as siteground/WordPress suggested, and am getting ready to buy cheaper hosting.

Do I just have to install WordPress at the new hosting company and upload the xml file? It can't be that easy, can it?

I have until February 11 to make this happen, but the Google, as usual, is full of bullE36 M3 SEO page rankers with no real information.

The XML file only contains the posts. For the easiest migration, use something like Updraft Plus to take a full backup and restore that one to the new WP host.

I just had to do that a few weeks ago - the second section of my blog post here explains how I did it. Hopefully the explanation makes sense.

If you personally own your DNS then you probably don't manage it through Siteground, so you just need to change the IP of your domain to match your new host.

If you don't have a lot of text content on your site then your XML file may indeed be tiny, you can open it with a text editor and you should see all of your site content in there. Transferring that stuff will be easy. You may also have to reinstall any custom theme you were using. If you added plugins onto the old Wordpress install then things could get more complicated.

To move pictures and preserve links, you just have to copy pics to the new host maintaining all the same relative paths. If they're all in one directory it'll be easy, if they were in /pictures on the old host just put that same directory with the pictures in it in the new host's HTTP server root directory. When the DNS is changed over your pics should work as before.

Edit: If these are pictures you uploaded through wordpress, they're in a chronologically separated directory tree under /wp-content/uploads

berkeleying headache this bullE36 M3. 

Follow along with bluehosts instructions after all the wordpress migration plugins produce files too big to upload. Wind up with SQL problems or Internal 500 errors. 

Domain is still leading to siteground version of the site, despite bluehost being setup to display a "coming soon" page as the home page. This may fix itself when siteground hosting is over, this might not. 

Domain name is setup through bluehost now using their DNS. 

Getting two entirely different wordpress panels with extremely different stuff on them, depending on who I load through. 

dammit, why is nothing ever easy

Follow instructions for WordPress All in One migrator to increase upload limit because my site backup is 2.5gb, and my upload limit is 64mb. Changes in .htaccess create a Error 500, internal server error. Make changes in wp-config.php, nothing happens at all. 

I just want these pictures to move and the permalinks to work. 

My 5 yr old is better at computer stuff than I am

RevRico said:

Follow along with bluehosts instructions after all the wordpress migration plugins produce files too big to upload. Wind up with SQL problems or Internal 500 errors. 

Domain is still leading to siteground version of the site, despite bluehost being setup to display a "coming soon" page as the home page. This may fix itself when siteground hosting is over, this might not. 

Bluehost only has control over their own DNS servers, and submitting it for propagation (Siteground link, but principle is the same for all) takes time for DNS information to propagate to the rest of the world's domain name servers. Your own ISP (and thus your PC) probably doesn't use Bluehost as their DNS, so when your machine tries to go to yourdomain.com, it will keep getting the old IP address until that propagation makes it to your ISP. The same is true for anyone else trying to get to your site.

Domain name is setup through bluehost now using their DNS. 

Getting two entirely different wordpress panels with extremely different stuff on them, depending on who I load through. 

What do you mean "who you load through"? I assume there is an instance of Wordpress at the old place, and at the new place. They are likely on different versions (which may be part of your migration problem, though I don't know much about Wordpress beyond what it is). I'm guessing you mean you go to something like panel.bluehost.com or dashboard.siteground.com (the specifics don't matter, I just mean you're going to a control panel of some kind specifically at bluehost, and one specifically at siteground, not being sent randomly to one or the other when you go to controlpagename.yourdomain.topleveldomain...

Follow instructions for WordPress All in One migrator to increase upload limit because my site backup is 2.5gb, and my upload limit is 64mb. Changes in .htaccess create a Error 500, internal server error. Make changes in wp-config.php, nothing happens at all. 

I just want these pictures to move and the permalinks to work. 

This isn't a simple or trivial thing. I suspect you're going to need more help than anybody's going to be able to give you here. I would check with bluehost and see whether they offer migration services. They should know some things about what version of Wordpress they're running, and thus faced with a bunch of data from another version, should be able to work through whatever massaging is needed to get it moved and running.

There's a reason webmaster and sysadmin are full-time gigs that pay well.

I'm not sure from your description where your understanding of this stuff is at, but in case it's useful, here's my synopsis of where I figure you're at right now:

There is a working copy of your site at siteground, which some DNS are pointing to (including either your ISP's domain name servers, or at least your PC's cached info), so if folks request your site and hit one of those domain servers, they'll still be sent there.

There is a broken copy of your site at bluehost, and as DNS propagates, that's what people will hit more and more, and pretty soon that's where all requests will go.

You have all the data needed to recreate the site (probably), but changes between Wordpress versions, or problems with the migration tools or how they are used mean that all the needed bits from the old site have not made it to the new site. This is sometimes a matter of a missing or changed config, and sometimes a matter of some utter failure of upgrade operations and requires a fair amount of manual research and correction to fix (e.g. a plugin that isn't compatible with a newer version, or just something that the scripts get wrong when skipping a version in upgrade; or worse, Bluehost is running an older version than Siteground, as downgrade is not so good). I have no notion of where your situation falls with regard to this, and that gets to where I suspect you could use professional help.

Or, fingers crossed, someone here does know something about the specific WP migration tools and knows a few simple things to check.

EDIT: Possibly a helpful clarification, but possibly not... Just trying to shed light if I can. Conceptually, it's like there's a copy of Microsoft Word at Siteground that has your manifesto written on it, and a copy of Microsoft Word at Bluehost that hasn't successfully gotten a copy of that. Either there have been issues actually moving the file, or the two copies of Word are different ages and can't read each others' files correctly because they store things in different places or under different names, or maybe there's even something analogous to missing a font on the Bluehost instance that keeps it from displaying right. That is, Wordpress is an app that displays your stuff, but it's complex enough that the stuff has to be in the right combinations of formats for each version of the application in order to be sent out correctly.

Richard Feynman once said something about understanding complex topics that was very very roughly along the lines of "when you can explain it to a six year old, you really understand it. If you can't, then your own understanding isn't all the way there." Clearly, referencing your thread topic, I do not have the ability to distill it all the way down to that, despite having been through it a fair bit. Or if I cut myself some slack, the issues you're having are outside the scope of a five year old's understanding of migrating a website.

Thanks for that Ransom. Propgation makes sense that DNS and therefore site changes wouldn't be instant, I'm just impatient in wanting to make sure everything I have is copied before it expires.  I'll be honest, I know about enough to get myself into trouble, and not enough to get myself out. I'm just getting frustrated because following handy step by step guides is bringing up problems, and there's no troubleshooting chart available. 

I'm attempting to transfer things via FTP now, because I'm all out of other ideas short of manually reuploading my files, and going back and fixing my build threads later. The big problem with that is that all my pictures on my computer have been recently reorganized, and I have no idea where everything wound up. 

And of course. "maximum file upload size 500MB". My file 2.6GB. Of course there isn't an easily identifiable way to download the folders I want in multiple archives. Ah, there it is. And it's still putting me over the file size limit. I guess I can just spend the next two hours compressing 4 months of uploads at a time. At least I only have 3 years of stuff to go through. Then there is still going to be getting the links to work, which I imagine is going to be a huge pain in the ass just based on how the rest of this is going. 

I feel like this just shouldn't be this hard. People changing and transferring servers happens every single day. Even the help documentation looks like something a little kid should be able to figure out, but there seems to be no troubleshooting information that I can find. 

This would be a lot simpler if I just paid the $69 for the plugin to do it all for me, but if I do that I'm back up to the almost $300 Siteground wanted for the year, and that's the sole reason for me transferring away. 

Next time there is a price increase, I may just go self hosted, but that seems like a whole new can of worms. 

In reply to RevRico :

It may be too big a can of worms to get real help, but it might be worth just pinging Bluehost support and saying "I'm trying to move my stuff, and it's broken. What now?"

People do this sort of thing all the time, yes, but in my experience it's rarely without significant pain.

I don't know Wordpress at all well, but I used to do some PHP, which I believe is the language it's written in, and you've referenced SQL errors; I think one of the disconnects that may be going on here is that getting all your files moved is only part of the battle. When I talked about separate installations of Wordpress at both places, that's also separate PHP engines and databases. All your text and links (basically everything except the image files) are presumably in the database at the old place, and need to be exported in a format from which they can be imported into the new database. You can't just copy a file from one place to the other and have it work; the new database needs to ingest all the data and do its own internal updates to manage it.

I'm torn between attempting to be helpful and give a little context and realizing that I may only make things worse, as I know so little about this specific setup that I probably couldn't fix it quickly if I were sitting at your computer. A bunch of half-accurate detail that doesn't solve your problem isn't really all that useful. Again, I think Bluehost support is probably a good next step.

And yes, self-hosting is another can of worms.

In reply to Ransom :

They gave me this information to transfer over the databases, which is one place I've begun running into errors. I'm trying to work up the patience to deal with their tech support. Part of me is starting not to care though if I'm being honest. 

I have the domain name moved, that's all I really wanted. I don't own the cars in the build threads anymore, and didn't do anything groundbreaking in the builds for other people to need access to them, the stuff I've put in the hotlink thread can join the thousands of other dead hotlinks nobody reads through anyway, and I'm changing from an adsensed blog to a formal business site, so not only are the posts useless, but the pictures related to them don't really serve a purpose anymore. Being able to upload straight to GRM has all but eliminated my need for private picture hosting. 

I'm just a data hoarder. I like to keep everything together and also redundant. Hell, the SD card on my phone has files and pictures going back to 2008 on it, despite my not using them or looking at them in years, and having multiple backups in multiple places.

I think I may just quit while I'm only somewhat annoyed and start working on the site itself, which will be sitting under construction until I find the other things I need for the business, like money to get started and a location to work. 

Hopefully, the site will automagically go into standby mode once the domain finishes transferring, which according to my email, can take up to a week, but it should at least be able to be worked with at that point.