These sets of steps are for moving a Joomla site from one linux server to another. This is documented mainly for my own reference, and I think it might make some assumptions, but if you’d like to give it a go, feel free.
The notes below walk you through backing up your Joomla site with tar, moving you’re new Joomla backup files to your new server with scp, and extracting your Joomla site backup files, setting up the database tables, and configure your new Joomla site to work on your new server.
TASKS ON EXISTING SERVER
Backup (tar) Your Current Site
1. cd /pathto/your/joomlainstallation/
2. cd ../
3. tar -cvvf backup.tar joomlainstallation/
Backup Your Current Database
1. mysqldump –opt –user=username –pass=password dbname > backup.sql
Move Both Backups
1. scp backup.tar username@newdomain.ext:/home/directory/
2. scp backup.sql username@newdomain.ext:/home/directory/
TASKS ON NEW SERVERCreate/Locate New DatabaseIf you’re on some hosting account, you’ll have a DB setup for it. If not, and you have permissions to create a db, do the following:
Load Backup Database
1. login to new server
2. cd /home/directory/
3. mysql -u username -p dbname < backup.sql
Extract Site Backup
1. mv backup.tar /pathto/yournew/(younewdirhere)
2. cd /pathto/yournew/
3. tar -xvvf backup.tar
Update configuration.php
$mosConfig_absolute_path
$mosConfig_cachepath
$mosConfig_db
$mosConfig_live_site
$mosConfig_password
$mosConfig_user
That should do it for you. Following the steps above should allow you to successfully move your Joomla site installation from one server to another. Also, there’s a very good ‘how to’ here:
There’s a lot of good information in the comments worth looking at. There’s a commment down the page regardin setting permissions and groups for the files and directories that deserve a peak.