I’ve been hosting at GoDaddy for a few years now. But the hosting is costing more each year, and it’s sloooooow. I also needed to update my PHP and it was crashing the site and seemed like a clean install might be the easiest way forward. Additionally, I’m aiming to get my AWS certification so it seemed like a good time to build some skills and transfer the site over to a new host. So here’s a description of how I went, painlessly transferring a WordPress site from GoDaddy to AWS Lightsail.
Steps I took
- I started by setting up an AWS Lightsail instance following these instructions. I logged into my AWS account and accessed the Lightsail dashboard. From there, I clicked on “Create instance” and chose the region (Australia). To quickly set up a WordPress instance, I selected the “WordPress” blueprint and provided a name for my instance. After clicking the “Create” button, the Lightsail instance was created.
- In the Lightsail dashboard, I clicked on the instance name to open the instance details page. Under the “Connect” tab, I clicked on the “Connect using SSH” button to access the command line of my instance. As per the instructions at Raddy’s site you’ll need to type in “
cat bitnami_application_password” to get the password to log into the new WordPress site. The username will be ‘user’ and can be deleted later. I logged in by going direct to [myipaddress]/wp-admin - In my original WordPress site, I went to tools > export, ticking the option for all content
- In the new WordPress site I went to Import > Install now and then uploaded the file that was from the original site
- Actually, I had 2 failed attempts at uploading, and the WordPress error’d out. Not sure why, but when I did a page refresh all my posts, media and tags had successfully imported! So before panicking if you get an error message at this step I recommend doing a refresh and checking the content.
- My original theme from the old site, was not working in the new host, so I ended up going with another theme, which was an hour or two of tweaking and I think it’s ended up looking a lot cleaner. I had similar issues with some of the modules I was running, but mostly it was a smooth transition downloading modules and configuring them. The most annoying module that seems to have ceased to exist is the one that posted automatically to Instagram, but I’ve moved that functionally to Zapier instead.
- For my last step, I needed to configure the DNS settings. In the Lightsail dashboard, I selected my instance and went to the Networking tab. I copied the static IP address of my instance. Then, I logged into my GoDaddy account and accessed the DNS management section for my domain. I edited the A record for my domain and updated the IP address with the one from my Lightsail instance. Doing it this way, leaves a website available while I transfer the domain name over to AWS route 53 and is the recommended way of proceeding so you don’t lose downtime or get locked out during the transfer process. I’ll be moving the domain over soon.
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- Finally, after waiting an hour for things to update, I tested my WordPress site by opening a web browser and visiting my domain. I ensured that the site was functioning properly and that all the content and settings were successfully transferred to AWS Lightsail.
By following these steps, I was able to successfully transfer my WordPress site from GoDaddy to AWS Lightsail.
My Costs
| GoDaddy | Lightsail | |
| Hosting | 18.95AUD / month | 3.50USD / month |
| Domain | 53.94AUD / 2 years | 13.00USD / year |
| Included in CPanel | TBA |
Still to do
- Work out an email server solution (possibly AWS free tier)
How it’s going
So far it’s been great. WordPress is easier to maintain and running a bazillion times faster (I wish I had taken some speed reading to give you the hard data). My one concern is that with the AWS pay as you go pricing, sometimes bills sneak in and can be surprising. So far I haven’t had that yet, but it’s in the back of my mind. Watch this space.
Update
Getting the site to automatically re-direct to HTTPS was sooo much easier then I thought it would be. Check out this 5 minute tutorial at SpaceRex!