Category: Tips & Tricks

WordPress Migration From Shared To Cloud

You probably start your website hosting from a small shared hosting account. As your website grows, you will hit the limitations of shared hosting, and then you know it is time to consider moving to a better hosting environment like cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is more reliable, higher scalability, flexible pricing, better security, and performance. Find out why cloud hosting is better for your business.

In this article, you will learn the various ways to migrate WordPress site from shared hosting to cloud hosting

7 Steps to Migrate a Website

Generally, in order to move a website from one location to another, you will have to copy all of the data including files and database. There are many ways to do it, and here are the steps:

1. Backup! Always keep at least a recent backup of your website before you do anything
2. Export files from current website
3. Export database from current website
4. Create a hosting account on the new server
5. Upload files to a new website
6. Import database to the new website
7. Update DNS records

At RunCloud, we have the migration service to migrate your website from the other web hosting server (shared hosting) to a RunCloud managed a server. It is free for the first web application!

If you would like to do it yourself, here are some methods to migrate your website from shared hosting to cloud hosting. We will use WordPress, the most popular CMS in the world, as an example.

1. WordPress Migration Plugin: Migrate Guru

Migrate Guru is a WordPress migration plugin from BlogVault, a WordPress backup solution company. The beauty of Migrate Guru is that it is a free one-click migration plugin that supports unlimited sized websites, from 50MB or 50GB website.

The migration process works on their server, so it won’t overload your server. No extra disk storage is required. Your files are copied to their server and deleted after the migration is complete. It also automatically rewrites URLs, bypasses import-export scripts, and handles serialized data.

Requirements:

• Migrate Guru plugin installed on existing WordPress site
• A WordPress installation on new cloud hosting
• FTP/SFTP access to new cloud hosting

How to use Migrate Guru to migrate WordPress site

1. Click on Migrate Guru from the sidebar menu in WordPress dashboard
2. Fill in your email address then click “Migrate Site”
3. On the new page, select FTP
4. Enter FTP details, including destination site URL and directory path
5. Click the “Migrate” button to start the migration
6. Make a cup of coffee. You will be notified by email once the migration completed
7. Enjoy your speedy site on new cloud hosting

2. WordPress Migration Plugin: All-in-one WP Migration

All-in-one WP Migration is one of the most popular WordPress migration plugins with over 2 millions active installations and 5,200+ 5 stars rating. The plugin is highly compatible with different operating systems and web hosting providers. It does not require any PHP extensions and works with all PHP versions from PHP 5.2 onwards. It supports WordPress version 3.3 to the latest version.

Requirement:

• All-in-one WP Migration installed on both current a new WordPress site

How to use All-in-one WP Migration to Migrate A WordPress site

a. Current server

1. On the current WordPress dashboard, click on “All-In-One WP Migration” > export
   
2. (Optional) Use the Find Replace within the database to replace existing domain name, if you change the website domain name on the new server
3. Click “EXPORT TO” and select FILE to download the website export file (.wpress file extension)

b. New server

1. On new cloud hosting WordPress dashboard, click on “All-In-One WP Migration” > import
2. Click “IMPORT FROM” > FILE (or your .wpress export file source)
3. Select your website export file (.wpress) to start website import
4. Click the “Proceed” button to overwrite the WordPress site with your All-in-one WP migration export file.
5. “Your site has been imported successfully!”

Note:

• The free plugin has a 512MB upload limit for importing website
• You can buy the Unlimited extension to remove the import limit, restore a backup from the server, and support WP-CLI commands. Other cloud storage extensions are available too.
• You may need to save the WordPress permalink structure twice after import complete.

3. WordPress Migration with WP-CLI and Rsync

Using WP-CLI and Rsync is the fastest way to migrate a WordPress site. It is more stable and reliable than using a WordPress plugin. Recommended if you want to migrate a huge website and you have SSH access on both existing and new servers.

WP CLI is a powerful command line tool for managing WordPress. You can install WordPress. update plugins configure multisite, and much more, without using a web browser.

Rsync is a Linux command line tool for fast local and remote file synchronization. It is a popular tool and included in most Linux distribution by default. Digital Ocean has a good tutorial on using Rsync to sync directories on the server.

Requirement:

• SSH access on both current and new servers
• WP-CLI on both current and new servers

How To Install WP-CLI

You can easily install WP-CLI via shell with two command lines:

sudo wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar -O /usr/bin/wp
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/wp

How to use WP-CLI and Rsync to migrate WordPress site

a. Current server

1. Connect to the current server via SSH
2. Navigate to your WordPress root directory (example: /var/www/vhosts/sitename/public_html/)
3. Export WordPress database using WP-CLI command:

   wp db export db.sql --allow-root

b. New server

1. Connect to the new server via SSH
2. Navigate to the directory where you want your WordPress site to be in (example: /home/runcloud/webapps/yoursite)
3. Pull website files from a current server using Rsync:

rsync -avz --progress --exclude wp-config.php username@currentserver.com:/var/www/vhosts/sitename/public_html/* .

4. Create an empty WordPress database. RunCloud user can easily create a database via RunCloud dashboard. You can create a database using command lines too:

   mysql -u root -p

   You will enter MySQL shell then use the following commands to create WordPress user and database:

CREATE USER wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'passw0rd';
CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'passw0rd';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit;

Remember change passw0rd to the secure password, you want to use. These credentials will be used for the wp-config.php file.

• Generate WordPress configuration file using WP-CLI command: wp core config --dbname=wordpress --dbuser=wordpressuser --dbpass=passw0rd --allow-root
• Import the WordPress database dumped in the directory using WP-CLI command: wp db import db.sql --allow-root
• Update WordPress installation ownership and use the recommended permissions for files & directories:

sudo chown -R runcloud:runcloud /home/runcloud/webapps/yoursite/
sudo find /home/runcloud/webapps/yoursite/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} +
sudo find /home/runcloud/webapps/yoursite/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +

Note:

• If the SSH is using a non-standard port, you can pass the port parameter to SSH with the -e option: rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p <port-number>' --progress --exclude wp-config.php username@currentserver.com:/var/www/vhosts/sitename/public_html/* .
• If you are migrating to a new domain. Run database search & replace to update the new domain name in the database: wp search-replace 'https://old-domain.com' 'https://new-domain.com'
• runcloud:runcloud is a reference that is in place of your system username
• /home/runcloud/webapps/yoursite where runcloud should be the system username and yoursite should be your web application
• To fix ownership of system user, use the navigation menu and go into your web application, scroll down to Tools, and click the Fix Ownership button.

Tips: DNS Propagation

After website files and database migration, you will need to update the domain name’s DNS records to the new cloud server IP address.

You can try speeding up the DNS propagation time by lowering the TTL (Time To Live). This will refresh the DNS at a quicker rate. You can try set TTL to as low as 120 (2 minutes). However, some of the networks may still update slowly.

Wrapping Up

RunCloud is a powerful and easy-to-use platform that helps you manage your websites on any cloud server. With RunCloud, you don’t need to be a Linux expert to set up, secure, and optimize your web applications. You can do everything from a simple and intuitive dashboard, saving you time and hassle.

RunCloud supports various web servers, PHP versions, databases, and frameworks. You can also monitor your server performance, back up your data, and automate your tasks with RunCloud. Whether you are a developer, a freelancer, or a business owner, RunCloud can help you run your websites faster and smoother.

What are you waiting for? Join RunCloud today and enjoy the best web hosting solution for your websites. It’s free for 7 days, no strings attached!

In this tutorial, we show you how to block bad visitors by their IP addresses using only Apache .htaccess file. No WordPress plugin required.

Your public website is on the internet for anyone, including bad visitors like bad bots, spammers, hackers, malicious users. They are annoying, taking up your web server resources, and potential security risk.
The good news is that you can “blacklist” them by blocking their IP address. An IP address is a string of 4 numbers separated by a single dot (IPv4) or 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal digits (IPv6). Each device on the internet is identified by an unique IP address.

At RunCloud, we support 4 different web server stack:

• NGINX+Apache2 Hybrid
• Native NGINX
• OpenLiteSpeed
• Containerised Nginx

If you are using NGINX+Apache2 Hybrid web server stack, then you can easily block IP address using the .htaccess file in your WordPress root folder.

What is .htaccess file

.htaccess is a configuration file for Apache web server. You can create and edit an .htaccess file using any plain text editor.

When the Apache server loads a web folder, it detects and execute the .htaccess file. .htaccess file can be used to modify Apache server configuration, enable or disable functionality and features — including blocking visitors by IP address.
One of the advantages of using .htaccess is that it is executed before website is loaded. It also does not take up system resources like PHP & MySQL.

Identify bad IP addresses

We need to identify a bad IP address before we can block it. Here we show two ways to find bad IP addresses that visit your WordPress site.

1. Find IP address of spammers

Login your WordPress dashboard then goto Comments. Click on “Spam” to list all the spam comments. The spammer’s IP address is displayed in the “Author” column. Identify the repeating spammers then copy their IP addresses. We will block them later.

2. Find IP address of brute force attacks or login attempts

We can find all visitors IP addresses in the web server access log file. It is a bit tricky and takes some experiences to identify a bad visitor.

Apache access log file path on RunCloud is:

/home/runcloud/logs/apache/app-name_access.log

• runcloud is the RunCloud default system user name. Replace it with your own system user name.
• Replace app-name with your web application name.

Check the Apache server log file and identify IP addresses that repeatedly visit (flooding) your website pages in a short period (every few seconds).

Who is the IP address?
Write down the suspicious IP addresses. It is a good idea to check who owns the IP addresses before blocking them. You do not want to mistakenly blocking a genuine visitor like Google bots, right? Simply visit https://who.is/ to check the owner of an IP address.

Block IP address using WordPress .htaccess file

Warning: Your website may not be accessible if you mess up the .htaccess file. Please make sure you backup your .htaccess file before edit it.

Now you have a list of bad IP addresses you want to ban them from visiting your website. You can easily block the IP addresses using .htaccess file.

Please note that .htaccess file only works if you are using Apache or NGINX+Apache2 Hybrid web server stack.
A default WordPress .htaccess file will look like the below:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Depends on your site configuration, your .htaccess file may look different. It is fine. Make sure you make a backup copy of the .htaccess file.

Edit your WordPress .htaccess file using any plain text editor (or RunCloud web based file editor) and add the following lines to the top of the file:

        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from All
        # add new line to block eacg IP address
        # 192.168.8.1

Add each IP address that you want to block as a new line below the above lines. Save the .htaccess file and any visitors with the IP addresses are unable to access your site.

Tip: You can temporary unblock an IP address by comment it — add a “#” at the beginning of the line.

Bonus: 6G Firewall

Now that you know how to block an IP address using WordPress .htaccess file. It is a small step to fight malicious visitors.

Blocking visitor by IP address is a temporary solution because IP addresses change constantly. It is best for quickly blocking certain visitors.

Check out the 6G Firewall by Jeff Starr, if you are looking for more complete WordPress security protection using only .htaccess file. It is free and open source.

Fine-tuned to minimize false positives, the 6G Firewall protects your site against a wide variety of malicious URI requests, bad bots, spam referrers, and other attacks.

Hope this article is helpful to you fighting annoying malicious visitors to your WordPress site. Please share with us about how do you ban bad website visitors in the comment.

Wrapping Up

RunCloud is a powerful and easy-to-use platform that helps you manage your websites on any cloud server. With RunCloud, you don’t need to be a Linux expert to set up, secure, and optimize your web applications. You can do everything from a simple and intuitive dashboard, saving you time and hassle.

RunCloud supports various web servers, PHP versions, databases, and frameworks. You can also monitor your server performance, back up your data, and automate your tasks with RunCloud. Whether you are a developer, a freelancer, or a business owner, RunCloud can help you run your websites faster and smoother.

What are you waiting for? Join RunCloud today and enjoy the best web hosting solution for your websites. It’s free for 7 days, no strings attached!