Help Centre / Moving Your Site

Move A Site Over With A Migration Plugin

Updated 2 October 2026

Moving a WordPress site here is something you do yourself. There is no migration team, and we would rather tell you that than advertise a service we cannot staff. The good news is that the platform is built so the move carries no risk: every website you create gets its own temporary address, so you build the copy, test it properly, and only change DNS once you are happy. Your old host keeps serving visitors the whole time.

Budget about an hour for a small site.

Before You Start

You will need the login for your current WordPress site, the login for your Oxyforge account, and access to wherever your domain’s DNS is managed. Check that your current site runs on PHP 7.4 or newer, because the platform runs PHP 8.3 and a very old site may need its plugins updated before it will work.

Step 1: Create The Site Here

In the members area, choose Add Website, then Create New Website. Give it an internal name, a title and an administrator login. Provisioning takes under a minute.

When it finishes, the site has a temporary address that looks like site-1a2b3c4d.oxyforge.net. That address is live, it has a valid certificate, and nobody else knows it. It is where the whole move happens.

Step 2: Install The Plugin On Both Sites

Pick one tool and install it on the old site and the new one.

Migrate Guru is the one we suggest first. It is free, it copies up to 200 GB, and it does the work on its own servers rather than loading the host you are leaving.

Step 3: Point The Copy At The Temporary Address

Run the migration with the destination set to the temporary address, never your live domain. Use the destination-URL-and-administrator-login method. The SFTP option in these plugins will not work here, because our SFTP accepts keys only and a plugin cannot present one.

The plugin copies the files, imports the database and rewrites the stored URLs from the old domain to the temporary one as it goes. That URL rewrite is the part you would otherwise have to do by hand, which is why a plugin is easier than a manual move for most people.

Step 4: Test It Properly

Open the temporary address and work through the site as a visitor would. Click the main pages, submit a contact form, run a test order if it is a shop, and sign in to the WordPress dashboard. Anything broken at this stage is private, because the public is still being served by your old host.

See what to test before you point your domain for the full list.

Step 5: Connect The Domain

Only when the copy is right, add your domain on the site’s Domains tab and change the one DNS record it shows you. The certificate, the redirects and the WordPress address change are handled for you.

See connect a domain to your website for the detail.

Step 6: Leave The Old Host Running

Give it 72 hours. Visitors whose DNS has not refreshed yet keep reaching the old server, so nothing breaks while the change spreads. Watch your traffic, then cancel the old account once that server has gone quiet.

Things That Do Not Come Across

Caching and security plugins tied to your old host will not work here and should be removed. The platform runs its own page cache and object cache, so a caching plugin is not just unnecessary, it will get in the way.

If Something Goes Wrong

A failed import leaves the new site in a half-copied state. The quickest fix is to delete the website and create it again, which takes a minute, rather than trying to clean up a partial import. Nothing on your live site is affected.

If the plugin cannot reach the destination, check that you used the temporary address and not the live domain, that you chose the URL-and-login method rather than SFTP, and that the administrator login you entered is the one you created the site with.