 I remember when I was new to building WordPress websites and trying to migrate my very first sites. I remember it because it was a pain, it was a challenge. I remember trying to follow all these different tutorials and they just seemed overly complicated. Things didn't make sense and most of the time the migrations didn't work. But I did realize that this is a super important part of the WordPress process, being able to migrate sites so I kept trying and then I did find a tool. I found one that was straightforward, it wasn't overly complicated and it worked. That tool was all in one migration. This has been the tool I've been using for several years now. And in fact, in my current workflow, I migrate WordPress websites about two to five times a week. I'm always migrating them back and forth from my local host to a live website. And because I do this a lot, it needs to be fast, it needs to be streamlined and it needs to be painless. So we're gonna make this very painless because the reason why I had so many challenges when I was new or first one, I was new and I didn't really understand how things work. But the second one was I was using the wrong tools as well. Now all the one migration is my preferred tool. It is the one that has been working for me. But there are a couple other ones that I would recommend as well. I'll share all those with you at the end of the video. Here is my example website right over here and then here is a blank one that I have on my local host. So I got my local host right over here where I got my sites and I'm using local by Flywheel. I also made a video recently on how to use local by Flywheel and start spinning up WordPress websites for free really quickly. I'll put a link somewhere up here and then also inside the description because this is a really good companion video, companion tutorial to combine together for helping your workflow. So right here, we're going to migrate this site to this blank one. First, we wanna go in the back, go to your plugins and then we are going to add new and we are going to search for all in one. I just put in all in one and it's gonna be this one right here, all in one migration. Let's go ahead and install that and activate it. Next, we wanna go over to the site that we're gonna migrate to and we're gonna do the same exact thing. We're gonna go over to plugins, we're gonna go to add new and we're gonna search for all in one and basically we are just installing the same exact plugin on both sites. So let's go ahead and install and activate this. Now, let's go back to the site that we are gonna migrate. We're gonna go here to our tool tour all in one migrate and let's go to export. Now through the years they have added more options over here like you have options where you could choose what not to export. Usually I just export the whole thing. You could also export it to other places like Google Drive, Dropbox, things like that. That is totally up to you if you wanna go deeper into it but for me, I like to keep it simple. I just export the file, let this go ahead and prepare the export. Once it's done, then I download the file. Next, once it's downloaded, go to the site you're gonna migrate to. We're gonna go here to the dashboard to our all in one and then we're gonna import that file. And then you can see here, it does have a maximum of 300 MB. This is for the free version. If you got a bigger site, you are gonna need the unlimited. And then from here, just go ahead and click on it. I'm gonna, same thing, I'm gonna select file. Here is the one that I downloaded here and let's let it update. Now, because this is going to my local it happens super, super fast. When you migrate from your local host to a live website, it's gonna take a bit more time. So just let it do its thing. Once you get to this step right here, let's go to proceed and now it's setting everything up. Next here, now this part is super, super important. See it says like it's been imported but you need to save the permalinks right here because when we are migrating sites the URLs are different on both sites. So by saving this, what we're gonna do is update the URLs and make sure that those change. So click on this right here and you're gonna have to log in again. And then back here in your permalinks settings, first make sure it's in the right one. It's very rare, but it could happen where it's on the wrong one in here. You don't want that to happen. I mean, I have my permalinks always set at post name but just make sure it's in the same exact one as your last website. Go back here and save it. It's ideal to save at least two times but I like to be extra safe. So I usually save it around four or five times. We wanna flush it out and think of this as the same as flushing out and clearing out your cache but it's just for your permalinks or your URLs. Now let's take a look at the front and now we can see that our migration was a success. Everything worked just as it should. Now there is one thing to note though. If you are building, say an elemental website and using a contact form, check your contact form. Go back in here and do this on all your forms in fact. Go back there and look at where the emails are at because I have seen it at times when doing migrations. The emails don't match up all the time. You might have to double check just to make sure they're right. Okay, I could see my emails are looking good right here but because I use Cloudways and I'm using Cloudways URLs that are just redirecting to our domain. I know getting complicated now but it can change the emails here. So make sure to check out your emails inside your forms. Now this was a breeze right here, very straightforward but sometimes things happen. Sometimes it can get stuck while doing the migration. It happens, don't panic though because there is a solution. So if you're doing a migration and it just gets stuck, it freezes. An hour goes by and there are no changes. Here's what you wanna do. I'm gonna show you on my local host because this is a lot quicker right here. I'll go here to my site folder and then if I go here to my app and public and then if I go over here to WP content and right here at the AI1WM backups you're gonna open up this file right here and then from here you could take the file that you downloaded from your migration to the export file that you had. Take it and drop it in over here. And if you're doing this on a live website then you're gonna do the same exact thing just using an FTP. You are gonna look for this file right over here and you're going to put in that export file that you wanna migrate there. So now that's here, let's go back to the backend. I'll show you what happens. If we go back here, now that file is in our backups it's right here and I could go and I just click on restore and then that is a solution in case if you get stuck and the migration just doesn't go through. Now all the migration has worked for me for well over five years now. I've been using it steady. Like this is one of my main plugins inside my toolbox that I use on a regular basis. There are some other good ones but really quick though this is really important because what I showed you is with the free version. The free version is limited for smaller websites. I believe it's 300 megabytes or so but it's for smaller websites. If you got a big website you do need to get the premium version and as much as I wish everything was free that would be in a perfect world that we would never have to pay for software but this one I paid for it and when I was new I didn't wanna, I was on a budget so I wasn't trying to pay for things that I didn't wanna have to but I did pay for it and this has saved me so much time and headaches that it is well, well, well worth the investment. So for the extension you can't find it right over here. I'll leave a link in the description. I'm not an affiliate or anything. I just really, really like this. I believe it is gonna help a lot of people. For 70 bucks a year it will save you tons of time. Now there are other options as well. First I wanna show you an option that most of you probably already use or have heard of. Now Duplicator's always been a very popular one but I would not recommend using this plugin even though it is good. The thing is it was bought out by some major company that buys all kinds of plugins. They raise prices and I just don't support that kind of practice inside the WordPress space and this one I just would stay away from it. It was good but because of business stuff that has happened I would avoid it because there are some other really good options. The next one is gonna be WPVivid. Now this is a good option right here. One thing I do like is they have a lifetime deal well at least at the time of making this video and I do have the lifetime deal. This one is good because you could do migrations but you could do a whole lot more. So this is a far more robust solution right here for anybody that is more intermediate or more advanced this is a good solution. The next one would be Migrate Guru. Now this is totally free right here. I haven't used it yet though but I know people like Kyle from the Admin bar who I have a whole lot of respect for. He vouches for it and I keep my ear inside the industry and when I see people that I respect vouch for something I think it's safe for me to go ahead and say this is an option you could look at as well. Going back over here though to all in one to me this is the most simplest, most straightforward solution. It's worked for me for years so I haven't needed to move on. I'll leave that up to you though. I hope this helps out and I hope that this can make it a whole lot less painless to migrate sites than the experience I had when I first started. And if you found this video helpful then make sure to do all that good YouTube stuff. Don't forget to like and subscribe. It does help to support the channel and I'll be back again soon. Thank you for watching.