Finding a new web hosting company to support your website can be a long and arduous process of reading web hosting reviews, talking to hosts and comparing prices. And once you’ve found a new host, you still have to upload your website and get it back online. It used to be that in order to restore your website on a new hosting server you had to do it all manually, file by file. Thankfully, control panels have made it easy to archive and restore any website in a matter of moments.
If you’re moving from one cPanel host to another cPanel host, check out our guide to backing up and restoring your website with the cPanel Backup Wizard.
Step 1: Login to cPanel
You’ll need to do a full backup of your website before leaving your old web hosting company. To get started log into your cPanel account.
In most cases, you’ll input your login details at http://YOURDOMAIN/cpanel/ or http://YOURDOMAIN/controlpanel/ If neither of those addresses work for you, consult the welcome letter you received from your host when you first signed up or contact your hosting company.
Step 2: Enter the Backup Wizard
Once logged into your account, move to the Files section of cPanel and click on the Backup Wizard link.
Step 3: Choose backup
Inside the Backup Wizard you’ll be given a choice to backup your website or restore it. Choose backup.
Step 4: Perform a full backup
cPanel will give you the option to perform a partial backup of only specific files and folders or a full backup of your entire website. Choose full backup.
Step 5: Generate backup
This is where you’ll actually be backing up your website. Make sure the email address listed is accurate and then click on generate backup.
Step 5: Retrieve backup
Once your website has been backed up completely, you’ll receive an email notifying you that an archived copy your site is available for download. Go to your control panel file manager within cPanel and locate the zipped file in your /home directory. Highlight the file and click download to store the file on your local computer.
Step 6: Email the file to your new hosting company
Your new hosting company will upload your website and get it back online for you. Simply email the zip file to your hosting company so that it can be completely restored.
And that’s it! Happy archiving!