Due to being hacked, we recently moved our site to a new hosting company, rebuilding the site manually so we did not copy across any infested files or database entries.

My final task is to get all the user's (well, just customers) from the old installation and add them to the new setup.

I have googled this problem and only found one recommendation that appeared to work... but, unfortunately, the users' passwords weren't copied across.

So can anyone advice on a reliable, secure, up-to-date way of transferring across all the users data?

Thanks in advance.

Due to being hacked, we recently moved our site to a new hosting company, rebuilding the site manually so we did not copy across any infested files or database entries.

My final task is to get all the user's (well, just customers) from the old installation and add them to the new setup.

I have googled this problem and only found one recommendation that appeared to work... but, unfortunately, the users' passwords weren't copied across.

So can anyone advice on a reliable, secure, up-to-date way of transferring across all the users data?

Thanks in advance.

• plugins
• users

• 1 So your site has been hacked, you don't trust "database entries" and yet want to copy user info especially critical info like passwords? Isn't that the first thing you discard? Shouldn't you generate new temp passwords and contact customers in order to set a new password? – webtoure Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 9:55
• Of course, yes, I wasn't looking at it from that angle. Thanks. – Boycott A.I. Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 10:11

4 Answers 4

The best way to do what you are asking is to perform a data EXPORT on the MySQL database using MySQL Workbench from the original instance of WordPress and then IMPORT the relevant tables into the New instance.. Passwords are all encrypted so these would migrate as was.

There's two main ways you can do it.

Option 1 is to use a tool like PHPMyAdmin to manually export the data to a .sql file and import it into the new database.

Option 2 is to use a plugin like https://github/wp-sync-db/wp-sync-db to transfer the data. Note that this plugin is an open source fork of a paid plugin. I linked to the open source version because I bought the paid one (before finding this fork) and only had issues. The free one works well.

Option 1 is quick and easy is you only have a handful of sites to migrate. Option 2 is a bit longer but you'll have an easier time if you have many sites to do.

To transfer user data from one WordPress site to another can be easily done by exporting the user data from the older website to a CSV or XML file. Then use this CSV or XML file and import the data to the new website.

There are plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce that can facilitate the transfer of data from one site to another using the import-export method. This plugin will help you import and export the data using a CSV file.

The plugin will also help you transfer the password using the CSV file. But one of the catch is that the passwords are saved in encrypted form in the database. WordPress uses the MD5 algorithm to encrypt the passwords So when importing and exporting, the passwords are transferred in the encrypted form as well.

Migrating WordPress users with their password is easily possible with this free WordPress user import export plugin by WebToffee.