Move any website to Dredge

Before you start

• Moving WordPress? Use Move a WordPress site to Dredge instead. It has a plugin method that's easier.
• Take a full backup on your old host: every file, plus an export of each database. Keep it until the move is finished.
• Leave your old hosting running until the very end. Visitors keep seeing the old site while you set up the new one.

Step 1: Copy your files

1. On your old host, compress the site's folder into a .zip file with its file manager, and download it. If there's no way to zip it, download the folder with an FTP client.
2. In cPanel on Dredge, open File Manager and go to public_html, or the folder for your domain if it's an extra domain on your account.
3. Upload the .zip, right-click it, choose Extract, then delete the .zip. Check the site's files sit directly in the folder, not in a subfolder inside it. Upload a website covers this in more detail.

Step 2: Move the database

Skip this if your site is plain HTML with no database.

1. On your old host, open phpMyAdmin, select the database, click Export, and download the .sql file.
2. On Dredge, create a database and a user with all privileges. Note the names: cPanel adds your username to the front, so shop becomes something like youruser_shop.
3. In cPanel, open phpMyAdmin, select the new database, click Import, choose your .sql file, and click Import.

Large database? Compress the export to .sql.gz first; phpMyAdmin shows the largest file it accepts on the Import page. If yours is bigger, get in touch and we'll help.

Step 3: Update your site's settings

Your site has a settings file that tells it how to reach its database. It's often called config.php, .env, configuration.php (Joomla), or settings.php (Drupal). Open it in File Manager and update:

• the database name and user, with the prefix cPanel added
• the password you set for that user
• the database host, which is usually localhost

If the settings mention a full folder path from your old host, change it to your path on Dredge, which looks like /home/youruser/public_html.

Step 4: Match the rest of the setup

• PHP version: use the same one your old host ran. Change your PHP version takes about thirty seconds.
• Scheduled tasks: recreate any cron jobs; see Set up a cron job.
• Email: recreate your mailboxes and forwarders on Dredge, or follow the Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 guide if your email lives there.
• Redirects and rewrites: make sure the .htaccess file came across. File Manager hides files starting with a dot until you turn on Show Hidden Files in Settings.

Step 5: Preview it before you switch

Your domain still points at the old host, so you can check the Dredge copy privately. Add a line to your computer's hosts file with your Dredge server's IP address (shown in cPanel under Server Information) followed by your domain, for example:

203.0.113.10 yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com

On Windows the file is C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts; on Mac and Linux it's /etc/hosts. Click through the site, test forms and logins, then remove the line.

Step 6: Go live

1. Change your domain's nameservers to Dredge: see GoDaddy, Squarespace, or Cloudflare or Porkbun or Namecheap.
2. Once the change has spread and your free certificate is issued, check the site loads over https://.
3. Give it a few days, take a last backup from the old host, then cancel it.

← All guides