Migration of this blog to Linode

Linode, a popular cloud hosting provider, was last year acquired by Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery network and cybersecurity company. Last week, Akamai announced it will heavily invest into Compute and bring highly distributed cloud called Akamai Connected Cloud.

I was interested to see how difficult it would be for me to migrate this blog from the current hosting on my neighborhood NGO community physical server to the Linode.

I was especially interested to see, if I can leverage Linode Marketplace, which offers a range of pre-configured software packages, including WordPress. If you already have an existing WordPress site and are considering migrating to Linode, this guide will take you through the process step-by-step.

Step 1: Choose a Linode Plan

The first step in migrating to Linode is to choose a hosting plan that suits your needs. Linode offers a range of plans to suit different budgets and requirements. When choosing a plan, consider the amount of traffic you expect to receive, the size of your website, and any other special requirements you may have. I plan to look into scaling options, but as far I understand, the options are pretty limited right now on Linode. There is a chance to leverage sheer power of CDN, instead of building autoscaling groups in the future.

Anyway, I chose one of the cheapest options.

Step 2: Create a Linode Account

Once you have selected your hosting plan, you will need to create a Linode account. To do this, simply visit the Linode website and click on the „Sign Up“ button. You will be prompted to enter your email address and a password to create your account.

Step 3: Deploy WordPress from Linode Marketplace

The Linode Marketplace makes it easy to deploy WordPress on your Linode server. To do this, simply log in to your Linode account and navigate to the Marketplace. From here, select the WordPress option and click on „Deploy.“ The Marketplace will take care of the rest, installing and configuring WordPress on your Linode server.

Step 4: Export/Import Content Directly in WordPress

If you already have an existing WordPress site that you want to migrate to Linode, you can use WordPress’s built-in export/import functionality to move your content to your new server. To do this, log in to your existing WordPress site and navigate to Tools > Export. Select the content you want to export and click on „Download Export File.“ Once the file has downloaded, log in to your new WordPress installation on Linode and navigate to Tools > Import. Select the file you just downloaded and click on „Upload file and import.“ WordPress will take care of the rest, importing your content into your new site.

Step 5: Update DNS Records

Once you have completed the above steps, your WordPress site should be up and running on your Linode server. The final step is to update your DNS records to point to your new Linode server. This will ensure that visitors to your site are directed to the correct location. To do this, you will need to log in to your domain registrar’s website and update the A record for your domain to point to your Linode server’s IP address.

Step 6: Generate new certificate

The biggest effort was to make the website having the proper https certificate. I used this howto from Linode. I needed to modify apache configuration located in:

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf

Then install the certbot based on the instruction and finally restart the apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Conclusion

Migrating an existing WordPress site to Linode is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps. The introduction of the Linode Marketplace and WordPress’s built-in export/import functionality makes the process even easier, allowing you to move your content to your new server with ease.

Next, I want to explore options to run this blog in Kubernetes to get some hands on experience with this technology on Linode.

And BTW – I generated majority of this post in ChatGPT. Yes, I had to customize it to give it personal touch, but it saved me lot of time.