I moved my site to a new server last month, did you notice? Well, maybe some of you did as the server was unavailable for a brief amount of time. The good news is I was able to document the process so next time it will be completely transparent.
Here is what I did:
- Download and install Akeeba Backup to your existing Joomla installation
- Backup your existing Joomla installation with Akeeba Backup
- Download the jpa backup
- Download and extract Akeeba Kickstart
- Upload the jpa backup and the kickstart.php file to the new server to host Joomla
- Navigate to the new webserver (i.e. http://localhost) and follow the prompts
With Joomla installed, I also had to:
- enable mod_rewrite on the new server (required for SEF)
- re-add the .htaccess file with the right permissions to the appropriate directory
The only thing to note is that you may lose some statistics on your site or potentially some comments depending on how you have things configured and how long the transition takes. One important thing to keep in mind is the TTL of your site’s DNS records. In most cases, it is likely one hour, which means up to one hour of content may be lost from the site. Now you may be wondering why I used Akeeba Backup (free) instead of just zipping up the directory. The primary reason was because it bundles both the Joomla installation as well as the database.
That’s it! Overall, quick and easy.
© 2011, Steve Flanders. All rights reserved.
