How to Migrate to Strattic from Flywheel

Welcome!  In this article we are going to go over the steps for migrating your WordPress site from Flywheel hosting to Strattic.

Flywheel adds some additional code and configurations to their setup that requires a few extra steps when transferring a site.

Step 1: Follow the Normal Migration Process

To begin the process, follow our basic migration steps.  

This will get your site transferred over to Strattic.  However, you will see a series of error messages when you go to visit your WordPress site on Strattic.

Step 2: Update the wp-settings.php File

This step will remove the error messages we saw at the end of step one.

To do this, we have to make a change to the wp-settings.php  file.

1. Login to our Strattic account using SFTP. (Here is an article showing how to access your site with SFTP)

2. Open the wp-settings.php  file in the public_html  folder.

3. Around like 290 find this line of code:

   include_once( ABSPATH . "/.fw-config.php" );

4. Delete that line of code.

5. Save the updated wp-settings.php  file.

Step 3: Check if there is a .fw-config file in the root and delete it

You should now be able to view your WordPress site on Strattic as well as long to the admin area. However, the Strattic buttons will not appear in the admin area yet.

Step 4: Update the wp-config.php File

To make the Strattic buttons appear in the admin area we have make some changes to the wp-config.php  file.

1. Login to our Strattic account using SFTP.

2. Open the wp-config.php  file in the public_html  folder.

3. Around line 96, find code that looks like the following

   define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', '/some/value/is/here');
define('WP_CONTENT_URL', 'https://some.url.io/is/here');
define('UPLOADS', 'some/vaue/is/here');

4. Delete those lines of code.

5. Save the wp-config.php  file.

This will make the Strattic menu items appear in your WordPress admin area.  However, the publishing to static will fail until we complete our final step.

Step 5: Modify the .htaccess file

In this final step you will have to make changes to the .htaccess  file.

1. Login to our Strattic account using SFTP.

2. Open the .htaccess file in the public_html  folder.  (If you do not see this file, you may have to turn on “Show Hidden Files.”  This is often an option under the “View” settings.)

3. Delete the code in the .htaccess  file

4. Replace it with the code below

5. Save the .htaccess  file

Replace the existing .htaccess  code with the code below:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

This will allow the publish to static and publish to preview to work properly.

Step 6: Check your WordPress site on Strattic for any encoding issues

Click around and make sure everything looks ok. If you notice any encoding issues on your site, try adding this line to your wp-config file:

define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’); 

Step 7: Proceed as Normal

Your Flywheel site should now be fully migrated over to Strattic and work properly.  You can now proceed with editing your site and pushing it live.