Using the Pressable Automated Migration Plugin

The Pressable Automated Migration plugin makes it easy to migrate your sites to the Pressable platform. Whether you are a developer with a lot of experience moving sites or have never moved a site before, this plugin does all the hard work so that you don’t have to. Move as many sites as you need, quickly and with minimal interaction.

Before Starting Your Migration

Before migrating your site to Pressable, you’ll need to have a few things already established:

• An active account with Pressable
• A site deployed on our system where you will be migrating your site to.
• A site that is ready to be moved to the Pressable platform.
• Ensure that your current site and your Pressable destination site are disconnected from Jetpack.

Obtain Migration Settings

If you haven’t yet created a Pressable site to migrate to, you can do so by following the information here.

If you do have a Pressable site already created, login to the My.Pressable.com Dashboard and open up the settings page for the site you would like to migrate to:

In the left menu, you will see a Site Actions tab. From that, navigate to the Migrate Site section:

This section will show the details you will need for the Pressable Automated Migration plugin, as well as a Download Plugin button to quickly access it:

Install the Automated Migration Plugin

Login to the site that you will be moving to the Pressable platform (the source site) and navigate to Plugins > Add New. In the plugin search box, search for “Pressable Automated Migration” (or upload the plugin if you downloaded it instead). When the plugin listing comes up, click on Install Now and then Activate:

Once you Activate the plugin, you will see the following screen:

Enter an email address where you’d like to receive migration progress notifications (migration started, migration failed, migration completed), accept the Terms, and then click Migrate.

Next, you will see the following:

Here you will insert the details that you obtained from the Obtain Migration Settings section above. Enter that information within the corresponding plugin fields.

• Destination Site URL: The URL that you are moving the site to. This will typically be the staging URL of the site on our system so that you can preview the migrated site before pointing your domain.
• SFTP Address: sftp.pressable.com – This be hardcoded into the plugin and should not need to be entered.
• SFTP User: The SFTP username provided in the Migrate Site section settings.
• SFTP Password: The SFTP password provided in the Migrate Site section settings.

The options here are not needed and can be disregarded:

If you would like to only migrate specific database tables, you can modify the selected tables under the Add Tables section:

Migrate the Site

Once you have your migration settings in place, click on the Migrate button. The migration progress page will appear:

BlogVault will move the site to Pressable servers and provide live updates on the status of the migration. The amount of time a site takes to migrate will vary based on the size of your site.

You will receive an email upon completion of the migration and your migrated site will be visible at the site’s staging URL.

After Migration

After your migration is complete, please make sure you clear caching on the site before accessing or reviewing it.

Once the cache is cleared, review the site to ensure everything was migrated properly. If using a theme that generates static CSS files like Divi, please be sure to clear/reset those as well.

Once you’ve reviewed the site for correctness, you are ready to point and add a domain to take the site live. If using Yoast plugins, you will also need to reset Yoast indexables after adding a domain to the site.

Critical Error

If you see a Critical Error notice once the site migration completes, it is most likely due to a PHP Version incompatibility, and you can change your PHP version for the site by referring to this guide. If that doesn’t help, check the PHP Error Logs for the site for clues as to what may be wrong.

Remigrating to include missed content updates

If needed you can remigrate the site one last time using the plugin to synchronize any changes that have been made to your live site since the initial migration. We recommend a content freeze on sites during the migration process.

Please Note: We recommend also changing the migration user password after successful migration, which you can do by going to My.Pressable.com Dashboard > Choose your site > Click Site Actions > Click Migrate Site > Click Reset button (as shown below):

Common Errors and Issues

Cannot reset and copy the migration SFTP password

If you are a collaborator on the site and don’t have the option to reset and copy the migration password, this means the site owner must update your permissions to include Reset Collaborator Password. This guide outlines how to do that or the site owner can contact Pressable support and we’ll help.

Alternatively, you may use your own SFTP user credentials if you already have the SFTP Access permission.

Unable to access wpconfig file. Please check if WordPress is installed on the destination address. Also, check if you have permission to access the folder.

Double-check that you entered a valid site URL, and that it is associated with the migration user you specified.

Invalid username/password details.

Please double-check that your username and password are correct.

We are unable to contact the source site. Due to this the migration cannot be completed.

If your site uses CloudFlare, please disable Cloudflare Proxy it so that the migration plugin can communicate with your site properly.

If your site is using a security plugin, try temporarily deactivating the plugin during the migration process.