This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft Tech Community - Latest Blogs - .
Managing your WordPress site and dealing with production loads will be quite simple with WordPress running on Linux App Service. This article outlines the brief steps to be followed for migrating your WordPress sites from Windows App Services or any other external hosting provider to WordPress deployed to Linux App Services, preferably created from Azure Market Place. These migration approaches will let you continue with the existing WordPress site as it is. It is recommended to transition the traffic to the new site after all the validations are taken place, site is successfully up and running.
A detailed step by step guide for migrating your WordPress site to Azure is here:
1. All-In-One WP Migration Plugin
This is a very popular and trusted plugin used for migrating sites with ease and is also recommended by the Azure WordPress team. However, there are certain things that need to be taken care of before starting on the WordPress migration.
By default, the file upload size for WordPress on Linux App Services is limited to 50MB, and it can be increased up to 256MB (Maximum Limit). You can change the file upload size limit, adding below Application Settings in the App Service and save it.
| Application Setting Name | Default Value | New Value |
|---|---|---|
| UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE | 50M | 256M |
| POST_MAX_SIZE | 128M | 256M |
If you choose to migrate the site using this plugin, install All-In-One Migration plugin on both source and target sites. Then export the data at source site and import it on target server.
2. Manual Migration Process
The prerequisite is that the WordPress on Linux Azure App Service must have been created with an appropriate hosting plan from here: WordPress on Linux App Service.
The manual Migration process is involved with multiple steps:
Export the data at source site:
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Download the wp-content folder from the source site. You can use popular FTP tools like FileZilla to connect to the web server and download the content. Depending on the size of your content, it could take some time. Meanwhile, you can go to the next step to download a copy of your database.
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Export the contents of the source database into an SQL file. You can perform this task either using MySQL client tools like HeidiSQL, MySQL workbench, PhpMyAdmin or through command line interface. You can download the MySQL Workbench from here or install phpmyadmin using these steps. For more information on exporting the database, please refer to the following documentation.
Import the data at destination site:
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Go to SCM site of your WordPress App Service using the following URL.
https://<sitename>.scm.azurewebsites.net/newui -
Open Bash Shell from the menu shown on the top.
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Delete the existing content of /home/site/wwwroot/wp-content folder using the following command.
rm -rf /home/site/wwwroot/wp-content/* -
Now upload the new contents of wp-content folder using the File Manager. Click on the label that says 'Drag a File/Folder here to upload, or click to select one'. Please note that if you are not able to upload everything at once, then you can try dividing your upload into multiple smaller ones.
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You can either point your WordPress to use an existing MySQL database, or migrate the content to the new database server created by the WordPress on Linux App Services offering.
Recommended Plugins:
Usually it is not required, but after the site migration, it is better to validate that you have the default recommended plugins activated and configured properly as before. If you are strictly bound to not using them, then you can remove the plugins. However, it is strongly recommended to enable W3Total Cache or equivalent & Image compression plugins
Search And Replace (paths and domains)
One common issue that users face during migration is that some of the contents of their old site use absolute urls/paths instead of relative ones. To resolve this issue, you can use plugins like Search and Replace to update the database records.
Installing PHP Extensions
There might be some specific PHP packages required to be loaded on to your App Service runtime to support the plugins that require these PHP libraries. Follow the steps described here to load the needed extensions.
Configuring Custom Domian
If you plan to setup your site with a new Custom Domain please follow the steps described here: Tutorial: Map existing custom DNS name - Azure App Service | Microsoft Docs.
If you plan to configure your site with existing domain then follow these steps: Migrate an active DNS name - Azure App Service | Microsoft Docs
Updating SSL Certificates
If your site is configured with SSL certs, then we need to redo the setup following the instructions here: Add and manage TLS/SSL certificates - Azure App Service | Microsoft Docs
Start your WordPress website today at Create WordPress on App Service - Microsoft Azure. Please comment on this post and let us know what you think. You can also provide your reviews at Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
You can try out the migration following the steps described here:
We will continue to deliver on our promise of empowering every WordPress developer to achieve more. If you have ideas about how we can do this better, you could post your ideas on Post idea · Community (azure.com) or you could email us at wordpressonazure@microsoft.com to start a conversation.