How to migrate your website from another hosting to a Hostini VPS

List all domains, subdomains and hosted applications. On cPanel, this appears under “Domains” and “Subdomains”. Also note the PHP version each application runs — legacy sites may need PHP 7.4 or 8.0, while recent WordPress runs on PHP 8.2+.

Identify active databases. In phpMyAdmin, note the name of each database and its approximate size. Databases above 1 GB require command-line export — phpMyAdmin chokes on large files.

Record external credentials the site uses: payment APIs, SMTP, CRM integrations. These credentials will need to be revalidated at the destination — some APIs lock access when the source IP changes.

Connect via SSH to the old hosting (if you have access) and generate a compressed archive of the public directory:

cd ~
tar czf site-backup.tar.gz public_html/

This creates a single file containing the entire site structure. On cPanel hosts, the default directory is public_html — on other panels it may be httpdocs, www or similar.

Export the database via mysqldump:

mysqldump -u db_user -p database_name > database.sql

If the hosting does not allow direct mysqldump, use phpMyAdmin: select the database, go to “Export”, choose SQL format and check “Add DROP TABLE” — this ensures reimport works even if the destination database already has empty tables.

Download the files to your local computer with scp (or via the panel’s file manager if you do not have SSH):

scp [email protected]:~/site-backup.tar.gz ./
scp [email protected]:~/database.sql ./

Connect to the VPS and update the system:

ssh [email protected]
apt update && apt upgrade -y

Install the full web stack:

apt install -y nginx mysql-server php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql \
  php8.3-curl php8.3-gd php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml php8.3-zip \
  certbot python3-certbot-nginx unzip

This bundle covers 95% of PHP sites in production. If your CMS requires specific extensions (imagick, redis, memcached), install them as well.

Configure MySQL with a strong password:

mysql_secure_installation

Answer “Y” to all security options. Note down the MySQL root password — you will need it.

Send the files from your local computer to the VPS:

scp site-backup.tar.gz [email protected]:/var/www/
scp database.sql [email protected]:/root/

On slow connections, consider compressing the .sql before sending: gzip database.sql shrinks the file by 70-80% for databases with text data.

On the VPS, extract the site into the web directory:

cd /var/www/
tar xzf site-backup.tar.gz
mv public_html yoursite.com
chown -R www-data:www-data yoursite.com
chmod -R 755 yoursite.com

Create the database and import the dump:

mysql -u root -p

Inside the MySQL prompt:

CREATE DATABASE yoursite CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'yoursite_app'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong_password_here';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON yoursite.* TO 'yoursite_app'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Import the dump:

mysql -u root -p yoursite < /root/database.sql

Update the database credentials in the site’s configuration file. For WordPress, edit wp-config.php:

nano /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-config.php

Adjust DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD to the values created in the previous step. For Laravel or other frameworks, edit the matching .env.

Create the site’s configuration file:

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yoursite.com

Paste the base configuration:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yoursite.com www.yoursite.com;
    root /var/www/yoursite.com;
    index index.php index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable the site and test the configuration:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yoursite.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
nginx -t
systemctl reload nginx

nginx -t validates the syntax before the reload — always run it. A syntax error in a config file takes down every site served by nginx.

Generate the SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt. Since DNS still points to the old hosting, use manual DNS validation mode:

certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns \
  -d yoursite.com -d www.yoursite.com

Certbot will ask you to create TXT records in your DNS. Create them on the registrar’s panel, wait for propagation (usually 1-5 minutes), and confirm in certbot.

Update nginx to use SSL. Edit the configuration file and replace the server block with:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name yoursite.com www.yoursite.com;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yoursite.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yoursite.com/privkey.pem;

    root /var/www/yoursite.com;
    index index.php index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yoursite.com www.yoursite.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

Reload nginx: systemctl reload nginx.