You’ve Probably Already Heard about Cloudways – the Popular WordPress Server that Everyone’s Talking about…
In this guide, we’ll explain all the correct steps when transferring a site to Cloudways hosting servers, including setting up the hosting in the most optimal way, so that the server runs smoothly and quickly.
Additionally, you’ll receive a 20% discount for 3 months if you sign up through the following link: https://digitizer.link/cloudways and enter the coupon code: Digitizer on the payment page
Shall We Begin? Before Cloudways, Cloudflare
Step 0: Before we transfer the site, it’s highly recommended that the domain’s DNS is managed through CloudFlare (the free account will suffice for most sites). CloudFlare’s DNS is the fastest in the world and provides an additional layer of protection as the server address is not exposed.
Additionally, DNS record management is under your control and is not “attached” to your hosting server. This reason is important because once the site is copied to the new server, it will take less than a minute for the whole world to see the site on your new server, instead of taking 24-72 hours in most cases, during which time the site is in two places (old and new hosting) simultaneously.
Imagine a visitor placing an order on one site while you’re looking at the site on the other hosting; things could fall through the cracks for several hours, so we want to minimize this time.
If you don’t have an account yet, you can open a Cloudflare account at the following link https://www.cloudflare.com and then we’ll click on New Site and enter the domain address of the site, choose a free account, give them a moment to scan the old DNS addresses and ensure that the records are correct and nothing is missing.
In the next step, we’ll receive a message that we need to change the NS (NameServer) records with our domain registrar and we’ll be shown two lines that need to be changed at the domain registrar. For example: moishe.ns.cloudflare.com
oofnik.ns.cloudflare.com
After changing the NS records at the domain registrar, we’ll confirm in Cloudflare that we’ve made the change and wait 12-72 hours until we receive confirmation that the NS has been successfully transferred.
After confirmation, DNS record management has been transferred to Cloudflare and is no longer managed by the domain registrar. Domain renewal will still be with the registrar, of course, and it’s recommended to set up automatic renewal there.
Now Let’s Move on to the Cloudways Interface
Starting with Settings
Step 1: Finally, we’re opening an account with Cloudways. We strongly recommend upgrading the account immediately, as the free trial period is only three days! If you forget to upgrade, your server will be completely deleted along with all the information!
Additionally, if you want a server over 4GB, you must have an approved account, as there is no trial period at all for servers of this size and above.
Step 2: Server selection – our first preference is Vultr HF (High Frequency) or Digital Ocean Premium, these are servers with faster disks and processors than usual, specially designed for phenomenal speed and optimal performance.
Step 3: Location selection – even in the digital world, location matters. For Israeli sites with traffic from the country, it’s recommended to choose Germany (Frankfurt) because it’s the closest location to Israel, or Amsterdam.
For global sites with worldwide traffic, it’s recommended to choose London, New York, or Canada, or any location from where most of your visitors come.
For sites targeting an American audience – it’s recommended to choose New York or Chicago.
Step 4: Number of processors and memory capacity – this greatly depends on your site, most sites will work excellently with a 2GB server and one processor provided that the traffic to them is not too large.
If you want to host multiple sites on the same server or if you have high traffic to the site, we recommend at least 2 processors and 4GB of memory.
If you already have an active site on another hosting, and there you have a large server with 6 processors and 32GB of memory, then maybe you should choose similar resources (in most cases you’ll even save part of your monthly cost), because your site probably needs it.
It’s worth checking, in some cases because the previous hosting didn’t know how to deal with performance-related issues or had no interest in helping you other than having you pay more money, and you were probably just recommended to upgrade more and more resources and you’ve reached a situation where you’re already paying hundreds of shekels a month.
If you’re putting more than one site on the same server, there’s no problem of course, as there’s no domain limit, but note, if one site requires PHP version 7.2 for example and another site with version 7.4, they must be on separate servers.
From a security perspective, it’s advisable to separate, but from a performance perspective, one large server is better than two small ones.
Step 5: Server configuration – in the server settings (note that there are different settings for the server and different settings for the application/site), go to SETTINGS & PACKAGES and in the BASIC tab change the MEMORY LIMIT to 512MB.
Then in the ADVANCED tab at the bottom change NGINX->STATIC CACHE EXPIRY to 525600. An important point that will help you improve scores in various speed tests.
In the PACKAGES tab, change the PHP version to the same version you have on your current site (to prevent errors), preferably version 7.4, or 8 which is already in a stable state, we’ve checked on several of our servers). To check what version you have on your current site, go to the wp-admin/site-health.php/ page on the old site and check what the current version is.
Finally, in the PACKAGES tab, change the MySQL version to the latest version available (currently MariaDB 10.4).
Step 6: Automatic backups – in the server settings in the Backups tab change Backup Retention to 4 weeks, so they have backups to revert to if needed.
Step 7: Email security – in the server settings, in the SMTP tab choose Elastic Email, it costs a few cents and it’s the easiest way for the sites on the server to be able to send emails. You need to enable this in the Add-ons window.
Installing WordPress
Step 8: Installing WordPress – At this stage, you’ve already chosen specifications and set up a server and now you’re installing an initial WordPress site where at the end of the installation you’ll receive a temporary address in the style:http://wordpress-XXXXXX-XXXXXXX.cloudwaysapps.com.
Step 9: In the application/site settings, in the ACCESS DETAILS tab create an SFTP user on the right side under APPLICATION CREDENTIALS it will be used by us to transfer files later.
We’ll return to this screen later to take the DB Name, Public IP and APPLICATION URL and perform the migration.
Transferring the Site from the Old Hosting to Cloudways
Step 10: On the old hosting (where your site is currently located), you install the Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin and activate it.
Step 11: In the plugin settings, you enter your email address and the details from step 9.
In Destination Site URL, enter the temporary address of the site shown in APPLICATION URL, in Database Name put the DB Name, in Server Public IP Address put the Public IP, in SFTP Username put the username, and in SFTP Password put the password.
Then confirm and click on Migrate, and you will receive an email confirmation that the migration has started. At this stage, the site is only being copied to the new hosting, a process that can take between 30 minutes to 12 hours, depending on the size of the site.
After receiving the email that the migration is complete, you can check the new site with the temporary address.
This is a full clone of the site, with all users and permissions.
The old htaccess file was not copied, so if you had specific settings or 301 redirects in the old file, you need to copy them to the new file.
If the site with the temporary address is going to stay for a long time, it’s advisable to ensure that search engines don’t crawl the site, using the setting in Settings->Reading.
Step 12: Check the site on the old hosting if there were things that changed from the point of starting the copy, for example, if you have a WooCommerce store, maybe there are new orders that were added in the last few hours since the start of the copy, and note down the details.
Step 13: In the Cloudways management screen, in the application (site) settings under Domain Management, we’ll add the site’s domain (after this we won’t be able to access the new site until we perform the next step).
Step 14: In CloudFlare, we’ll change the IP address of the A record, so that our Public IP from step 9 is listed there, and after a few seconds, the whole world will see the site on the new hosting!
Step 15: Activating HTTPS – In the Cloudways management screen, in the application settings under SSL Certificate, we’ll add our domain and email, to receive free SSL. We’ll save and then confirm automatic redirection to HTTPS.
Step 16: We’re done! At this stage, the site will be active with HTTPS. Sometimes if you see internal links to the temporary address (from step 8), the best way to replace an expression is with the Better Search Replace plugin.
To install and activate the site, under Tools->better search replace, in Search for we’ll write the temporary address without the HTTP and without the / at the end of the address, and in Replace with we’ll write our exact domain address, without HTTP or HTTPS and without / at the end of the address.
Then we’ll select all tables under Select tables and check Case-Insensitive so that if by mistake there was a link with capital letters, we’ll find that too. We’ll uncheck Run as dry run.
Note, check very carefully before running, because this action changes the values in the Database and therefore it’s dangerous.
If you have the Duplicator plugin, don’t select its table, because the plugin will fail when it reaches its table.
Assuming everything went successfully, we’ll perform step 16 again, only this time we’ll replace our domain name when we put it with HTTP and replace it with the same address with HTTPS, for example, we’ll replace http://www.domain.com with https://www.domain.com
So that we don’t have internal links that require redirects.
Step 17: Domain emails – If in the old hosting, the mailboxes were within the hosting framework, and not with external mail such as G-Suite, note that you need to open a new mailbox for your domain. This can be done at RackSpace through Cloudways for $1 per month per box.
You can open just one box, and it will be catch-all so that even if they send you to info, support, contact, sales… it will reach your box. Of course, attackers will exploit this vulnerability and may flood you with spam. We don’t recommend using catch-all.
If you’re willing to settle for incoming emails only, you can do email routing through CloudFlare. This is a new and exciting feature that was added very recently and is completely free.
If you must have outgoing emails in addition to incoming ones, you can purchase a cheap shared hosting package like Hostinger and use this server as your business email server. If you choose this option, you won’t be limited in the number of domains, mailboxes, or email forwards.
We’re Done, Everything is Fine and Fast!
Not sure, using this guide may only slightly improve the existing situation for you. But if you still haven’t reached satisfactory speed, this guide has given you a good basis and now you can move on to optimization work within the site such as improving images, fonts, icons, scripts, LCP, CLS, cart fragments, pixels, and more…
We’ve also written a guide about this, we recommend taking a quarter-hour break and then learning how to improve the speed and performance of a WordPress site.
