Transfer Website Content Between Servers Without Downloading

There are various reasons when you want to change the host for your blog or website. It does actually depend on the website traffic. With the span of time, you have to go for a better hosting provider according to your blog traffic. The renowned hosting services provides not only a better configuration but also a good customer service.
Whatever the reason is, transferring a website content to the new host is always challenging. Specially, if your site has a large amount of content like images, videos etc. Transferring those files and folders at your new host is not so easy.
Simply, you can use any FTP client to download your website content at the local computer and upload them again at your new host’s server. But this method is time-consuming as well as it consumes a great amount of your internet bandwidth. There should be a server to server transfer method to bypass your local computer. That means, the website content is transferred directly at your new server.
In my 4 years of blogging experience, I have switched between various hosting providers for my blog and faced that problem many times. Though some hosting providers offer the free website transfer service, I am not much delighted with. The main reason behind this is because that they take too much time to complete your request.
After trying too many ways, finally, I figured out an easy and quick way to transfer website content from old host to a new host. Yes, it is server-to-server transfer. That is why it takes a negligible time for transferring the content, consumes no extra bandwidth from your internet data plan.
Well, here is how to transfer website content from a server to another server without downloading them at your computer.
Preface
You have to sign up for a hosting plan from any hosting provider who provides cPanel to access your account. Once you get the cPanel of your new account, you can start the migration process. But never change any thing at your old hosting account unless you setup everything perfectly at your new server.
Here, we’ll discuss how to transfer website content from one host to another without downloading them at the local computer.

How to Transfer Website Content Between Servers Without Downloading at Local Computer

There is a backup option in the cPanel which allows to backup your whole website to a remote location using FTP or SCP service. We’ll make use of it to transfer website content between servers.
1. Log-in to your current hosting cPanel and click on the option called as ‘Backups’.

2. This shows all the backup options for you. Under the ‘Full Backup’ option, there is a button called as ‘Download or Generate a Full Website Backup’. Click on it.

3. In the next option, you can find an entry for backup destination. It is a Drop down menu having four options: a) Home Directory, which will backup your entire site at your home directory of the current server, b) Remote FTP Server, which will generate the backup at a remote server using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), c) Remote FTP Server (passive mode transfer), d) Secure Copy (SCP).

4. As our goal is to transfer files to the new server, Remote FTP Server is the easiest and best way, I ever used. So, choose the remote FTP server option and put an email address (to get the notification while the transfer is completed). As you have already registered for the new host, you should have the server details with you. Using those credential, fill up the required fields as shown below:

Remote Server: The new server IP address
Remote User: The username for your cPanel (if you did not create any FTP account)
Remote Pass: cPanel Password or the FTP user password if you have created any FTP Account
Port:        22
Remote Dir:  /home/your_user_name (you can choose any location)

Finally click on the ‘Generate Backup’ button.
5. Wait for a while until you get a notification email at the email address you provided.

6. Once the backup process is completed, login to your new hosting cPanel and go to the file manager option, locate the directory that you specified earlier. You can find a zipped file (.tar.gz format) there. Extract that file using the ‘Extract’ option at the File manager.

7. The extracted folder contains many files and folder. But you do not need each of them at all. Search for another zipped file called as homedir.tar. Delete all files and folder except that one.

8. Extract homedir.tar again and you will get all your website content under the public_html directory.

That’s it. You have transferred all the files and folders of your website to a new host without downloading them at your local computer.