The process of rebranding your website and moving content to the new site isn’t too difficult. To do so on private hosting, you’ll need access to WHM and cPanel.

There are two different processes to move content, depending on your hosting environment. Continue reading this article if you’re using private hosting, such as a VPS or dedicated server. If you’re using shared hosting, read the Shared Hosting Content Migration article.

Download Backups

The first thing you’ll need to do is login to your cPanel and download backups. Normally, you can login to cPanel by going to yourdomain.com/cpanel and using the login credentials your host gave you.

Once you’ve logged into cPanel, click on the Backups button in the Files area. You’ll want to download a copy of your home directory, and the MySQL database for your site.

These backup files can be quite large, depending on how many files you have, so it could take a few hours to complete.

Change Nameservers

Nameservers can take a while to update, so I suggest you do this before moving the files over. Login to the registrar where you bought your domain and look for a place to change the nameservers. Your host should have told you what these should be, but sometimes they are available in cPanel as well.

Create a New Account

Head over to WHM and login with the root password your host gave you. Click on Account Functions, then Create a New Account. The only section you’ll need to fill in is the Domain Information section, as outlined in the screenshot below. Change newdomain.com to your new domain name.

Take note of the username and password, as this is what you’ll be using later to login to cPanel.

Search and Replace

Open that database backup file you downloaded earlier in a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit. Do a search and replace, using the old domain name in the Find field, and the new domain in the Replace field. Save the file once that’s complete.

Upload the Backups

Using the username and password from the Create a New Account section, login to cPanel. Click on Backups under the Files area again, but this time, we’ll restore the home directory and database. Click on Choose File, navigate to where you saved the backup on your computer, and click Upload.

Depending on the size of these files, it could take a few minutes to a few hours for the upload to complete, so be patient.

That’s all there is to move content to your new site on a private server. Stay tuned for an upcoming post explaining how to redirect the old domain to the new!

Mitchell Wischmann is a Savvy Blogging contributing writer and author of FrugalFinders.com. He also provides technical support for bloggers at My Frugal Tech.