SugarCRM Transfer Tutorial

How to transfer SugarCRM

In this tutorial we'll go over the things that you have to do to migrate your SugarCRM from one hosting account to another. It can be a transfer to a completely different hosting provider, or it can be a transfer from one account to another with the same host. The steps are the same.

As with most other web applications the things that you have to do are:

• Transfer the SugarCRM files and folders from the account from which you want to remove the application to the new hosting account.
  
  
• Transfer the database used by your SugarCRM. To do this you have to export it from the old hosting account and import it into a database on the new account.
  
  
• Edit the configuration file of the application with the correct database information so that it can connect to the database on the new account. The SugarCRM configuration file is config.php.

The above steps are the essential ones that you have to take to migrate your SugarCRM.

If you only want to move SugarCRM to a different directory on the same account, then you have to transfer just the files and folders to that directory.

Transfer the SugarCRM Files and Folders

You need to transfer the files and folders of the application from the old hosting account to the new one. One way to do this is with an FTP client (e.g. FileZilla). Download the files and folders from the old account to your local computer and then upload them from the local computer to the new hosting account.

You can speed up the transfer process by packing the files and folders into an archive on the old hosting account, after that download the archive, upload it on the new account and unpack it there.

For some more details you can also check out the section on transferring files in the tutorial on how to transfer your website.

Transfer the Database

To transfer the database used by your SugarCRM, first you have to export it from the old hosting account. The exported database is saved as an SQL dump file. Then you have to import that dump file in a database on the new hosting account. You can do both things with phpMyAdmin. You can access phpMyAdmin from the control panel of your hosting account(s).

For more details and screenshots check out the sections on database export and database import in the tutorial on how to transfer your website.

Edit config.php

The database into which you import SugarCRM on the new hosting account will have a different name and probably a different user compared to the database on the old hosting account. So in order for SugarCRM to connect to the database on the new account you have to edit the file config.php and update it with the relevant database information.

You can edit the file while it's on your local computer before uploading it to the new hosting account, or you can edit it directly on the account from the Files section of the HostKnox control panel. Of course, you can download it at any time from the new hosting account (by using an FTP client), then edit it with a text editor (e.g. Notepad, Wordpad) and upload it back replacing the old file. The config.php file is in the root SugarCRM directory. So if you upload the application directly in the public_html directory on the hosting account (meaning the site will be accessible at yourdomain.com), then the path to the file on the account will be public_html/config.php.

In the config.php file find these lines:

'db_host_name' => 'localhost',
'db_user_name' => 'username',
'db_password' => 'password',
'db_name' => 'database_name',

The database host name should be localhost. In the place of database_name you have to put the actual name of the database into which you imported the database dump file on the new hosting account. You should replace username with the username of the user who has access to the database and password with the password of that user. You can add and remove database users for each of your databases from the Databases section of the HostKnox control panel.