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WordPress How to Build a WordPress Theme Launching a WordPress Site How to Migrate a Local WordPress Site to Live Server

Migrated site comes up as fresh install

Following along the vid for migrating a locally built wordpress to a live server (using cPanel, not dream host) and I have followed everything but when I go to my site, it wants me to install wordpress and create a user (several steps that are usually there during installation are missing and all I have to do is type in a site name and user). I have re-uploaded, re-uploaded my database, re-exported, re-done basically everything, but I still cannot get it to work.

I am migrating it to the root of my website, and the only thing I can see as different to the vid is that my host (web hosting hub) requires me to prepend my DB name and DB user with my hosting username 'user_'

When I log in to the wordpress theme after installation, I can access the theme I built and activate it but no plug-ins (custom post, custom pages etc) show up. It looks like wordpress isn't accessing my plug ins, but I have checked my ftp on the server and they are all there.

I also tried activating each of the plug ins, then used find and replace to replace all localhost/siteurl to just siteurl (since I was installing it in the root) and this still did not restore it.

Have tried to give as much information as possible, any help would be great

3 Answers

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Sounds like the DB prefix is different from one installation to the other. DB name sounds to be the same as the install is connecting with the database but an empty one.

Make sure that your local db is user_

You'll want to do a search and replace on it.

Alison Heyer
Alison Heyer
1,072 Points

I was having the same problem, and I read the above comment and it led me to the answer. My web host was, on importing the db, changing the prefix_name to all lowercase. My config file had PREfix_name as I had originally named it.

Yep that was the problem. Thanks Matthew!