Moving your TNG site to a new host

A lot of people have asked me how to move their TNG site to a new host. Here are the instructions [note: this might not apply if your host is moving everything for you]:

1. Back up your TNG data, either with TNG (under Admin/Utilities) or with phpMyAdmin (on your site control panel or “cPanel”; recommended for larger sites). The TNG backup creates a series of .bak files in the “backups” folder on your site. If you use phpMyAdmin, you should end up with a large .sql file on your computer.

2. Download all the TNG files and folders from your old site. If you used TNG to do the backup, the backup files will be included here.

3. Upload all the same files to your new site.

4. Use the readme.html page on your new site to install TNG again. You might need to create a new MySQL database, and the installation will ask you for the connection info. After creating the TNG tables, you can skip the rest of the installation.

5. Now restore your data on the new site. If you backed up with TNG, restore the data from Admin/Utilities. If from phpMyAdmin, go there on your new site and import the .sql file you created earlier.

That’s it. Now you should be up and running on the new site with all the same data, including user accounts.