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We have a WordPress site hosted by a third-party provider who has gone completely unresponsive. It is running on an old version of PHP (7.4.33). We were never provided access to FTP/SFTP, phpMyAdmin, or any other administration interface other than wp-admin.

We would like to transfer this site to Google Cloud Platform, which has a ready made deployment based on PHP 8 complete with all necessary dependencies required to run a modern WordPress site.

I was able to successfully deploy a test site using GCP, then I used the all-in-one plugin to download a .wpress backup of the site from the old wp-admin interface. I installed the all-in-one plugin in the new GCP deployment and attempted to import the .wpress file I exported from the old site.

The import failed due to the disparity between PHP versions. After a lot of reading I have concluded the following:

  • Deploying to a VM running version 7 of PHP then upgrading to a version 8 is bad practice and a security risk.
  • Upgrading the existing site to PHP 8 then migrating to the new site which already has PHP 8 installed is good practice.

However, as mentioned there is no way for me to upgrade PHP in the old site.

What is the correct approach to use to safely migrate my site given the constraints I have outlined?

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After upgrading all plugins and themes!

I would export the old website with updraftplus which will give you a Zip file containing the wp-content folder (plugins, uploads...) that you should be able to upload on you new server via FTP. And the database in a .sql file to import in your phpMyAdmin.

Of course this as to be done on a test environment to make sure everything is working fine on the new install before making it public.

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“Upgrading the existing site to PHP 8 then migrating to the new site which already has PHP 8 installed is good practice.”

This can be interpreted two ways.

  1. Upgrade the actual PHP version on the server itself which you said you have no access to.
  2. Upgrade the WordPress core version, themes and plugins to be be compatible with PHP 8.

Option 2 is the best option in your case. PHP code is generally backwards compatible, and upgrading WordPress core, themes and plugins can be easily handled via the wp-admin interface.

Once your WordPress core, themes and plugins are updated to their latest versions, you should be able to copy the WordPress wp-content directory to the new server and import the MySQL database from the old server to the new one and all should work as expected.

If all that sounds like gobbledygook to you, it sounds like you are using the “All in one WP Migration” plugin. So just run a new backup after those upgrades are on the PHP 7 setup, copy that over to the new PHP 8 server and import it as instructed.

Just be sure you have the latest WordPress installed on the PHP 8 server, you are set up with an admin account on that install and that you have the “All in one WP Migration” plugin installed on that setup as well and you should be good to go.

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