The easiest way to manually migrate your WordPress website without installing backup plugins is by using the WordPress export feature as provided in the procedure below.
Step 1: Moving website to another website
- Deactivate security and cache plugins
- Go to WordPress Admin then Tools
- Click Export and then All Content
- Click Download export file
- An XML file will be downloaded
Step 2: Transfering media file and migration completion
Now you need to download media files (images, gif, videos, etc.)
- In your cPanel go to file manager>Public_html>wp-content>Uploads
- In the Uploads folder, select folders with years, compress them, and download the zip file
- Go to the uploads folder where you want to migrate your website to and upload the zip file then extract it.
- Open the XML file with notepad or any code editor (the XML file is the one you exported).
- Search and replace the old website domain name with the new one for example oldomain.com with newdomain.com. Save changes.
- Go to the WordPress admin dashboard of the new site
- Click Tools>Import>WordPress>Install>Run Importer
- Click browse to import the XML file
- Then click upload file and import
- Assign author to the uploaded files
- Then click submit button
If you are getting an error that your upload file exceeds the maximum file upload size, then here is how to solve it
Make sure that you have updated custom meta descriptions and used the broken link checker WordPress plugin to check if there are any broken links.