Transfer domain from custom website to WordPress on new hosting with existing WordPress files on (yet) another domain

Question

Started work at a new company who have a Custom PHP-WordPress hybrid (monster of a..) site. I will be moving the entire site to WordPress, and also to a new host (probably Bluehost at this stage). I am currently developing a site on my personal domain, built on WordPress, with plugins, extensions etc. How can I; 1. Transfer the domain from the custom PHP site to the new hosting, and... 2. Transfer all the WordPress files/plugins from my personal domain to the new hosting, all without downtime.

I have read through documentation, such as https://www.bluehost.com/blog/wordpress/faq-how-do-i-move-my-wordpress-website-to-bluehost-1787/ , however I have the added hurdle of an existing domain transfer plus existing WordPress files to transfer.

Any ideas or help? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

1) The domain transfer is done on your domain registrar. You simply update the dns servers to the ones provided by your new host. The change takes about 2-24 hours to propagate.

2) To move wordpress sites you can simply move the files and move the database and then modify the config file to contain your new DB credentials. In that state unfortunately you cannot test the site with a test url, so you will have to change the site urls on the options table to that of the test url. Once you verify that the site is working properly, you once again change the urls to the proper domain, and once again you change your dns servers on your registrar to those provided by the new host

!! Do not forget to check if you have to migrate email accounts too. This will be a bit more involved.

EDIT: The above directions suppose that your servers use some kind of management panel that handles dns in a master/locally managed way, like plesk or cpanel with DNS servers provided by your host. If you use a vanilla non-managed server and your server is your actual DNS server, you will probably have to do some more work to setup your server to work as a dns master, or use your registrar's DNS servers and define custom dns entries (www, ., webmail, smtp etc) right at your registrar's panel, including MX, _dmarc etc for your email.