Kori Ashton celebrates her four year anniversary of this YouTube channel with circling back to the very first plugin she ever promoted – Yoast. Here’s a step-by-step process on using Yoast import export settings from an old site to a new site and how to deal with a failed installation. If you see the error too on the Destination fold already exists – Installation failed. 🙁
Step-by-Step:
1. Back up both websites and databases. Be sure you have a plan to access these backups easily and for free. I suggest using UpDraftPlus.
2. Set up access to FTP at your hosting company for your new website that is showing this error alert. (If you need a free tool to access it you can download FileZilla.
3. Find the file folder wp-content >> plugins >> wordpress-seo
4. Delete the entire folder
5. Go back to your website’s dashboard and install Yoast like a normal new plugin. Activate it.
6. Go to SEO >> Tool >> Import. And import the zipped file that you already exported from the old site.
7. Do a little dance and tweet to me that you #nailedit! @KoriAshton
Video Transcript
Hey y’all, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. You have found a channel dedicated to all things WordPress. It is WordPress Wednesday. And just like us being dedicated to WordPress, so it Pressable, who is our newest YouTube channel sponsor. They are all things WordPress hosting and support. If you’re looking for a really great solution, if you have questions about plug-ins or hacks or optimization tricks, anything like that, reach out to Pressable, check out their support plans, all their hosting packages. Really, really dynamic, great solutions for you. I’ll put the link to them in the description box below.
You guys, I’m so excited to say that this is my four-year anniversary of my YouTube channel. That’s insane to me, I love it! So, in celebration of four years of you guys hangin’ out with me and our community growing here online, I have launched a brand new website called AskKori.com. I’ll put the link to that in the description box below, as well.
Y’all, all of my videos live here totally for free for you to come in and dig through. All sorts of information, some bio stuff in there, we’re gettin’ personal, you get to see some Instagram stuff. Come check it out, let me know what you think about the crazy new website, and be sure to ask your questions to me so that I can make a video just for you.
Okay, so, you’re here probably because you wanna know about Yoast. This is what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna talk about Yoast importing and exporting, how to do it quickly and easily without frustration. There’s a simple way to get it done. And I did it today, so I know it works perfectly. And this is all done within the free version of Yoast.
So, how do you import/export or export/import the settings on Yoast from an old website to a new website that has the same content on it? How do you do that? Well, that’s exactly what I did today at AskKori.com. So, I’ll show you. You’re gonna go into the dashboard of your website. You’re gonna go over to the SEO tab, and you’re gonna go into the Tools section, mm-kay?
Now, this, where you wanna be right now is the old website. So, while that’s still live somewhere, you wanna go to the old website where the old content was, where you have all of your amazing green lights, you have all your meta description in place, your title tags in place, everything’s ready to go ’cause you’ve already been working on pages and posts over there. And you wanna grab all that content and get it ready to go put on the new website, where all that content now resides, right? Maybe you’ve migrated a website.
So, you’re gonna come here to this screen, you’re gonna click Import/Export. Remember, this is the old website, so we’re gonna export this content. And all you’re simply gonna do is click this button. That’s it, not tricky at all. And just in a matter of minutes, it’s going to create this downloaded zip file. So, this would live inside your downloads folder now. And it’s a zipped file, that’s all you need.
Then, you’re gonna run right back over to your brand new website, and go to SEO, and go to Tools, and you’re gonna do Import. That’s it, you’re gonna choose the file right here, and import that zipped file, click Import. That’s all you do and it works perfectly and seamlessly within a couple of minutes.
Now, if there’s any speed bumps that you hate, it might be the alert that I received today, as well. So, when I went to go migrate my website over, my Yoast plug-in did not come over with me. But, for some reason, inside the database and inside of FTP, it did carry over the plug-in. So, that folder still lived there, but it carried over no content. So, what you have to do in that scenario is access your FTP, go to your server. And I’ll put step-by-step instructions for this in the description box below, so you can just go boom, boom, boom, step-by-step.
If Pressable is your hosting company, GoDaddy, WPEngine, whoever it might be, go to them and ask for an FTP user. You’re gonna log in your FTP account, and you’re gonna drill down into the folder that is plug-ins, and you’re gonna find WordPress SEO, and I want you to delete it. Now, remember, we’re doing this with everybody having a backup in place at both websites, right? We already know UpdraftPlus is the plug-in we’re using for backing up your website. But, if you delete that folder on the new website, it allows you to then go reinstall it, just like you normally would inside your dashboard.
So, you’d go back to your plug-ins area, and you just say Add New plug-in, and you go ahead and install Yoast now, once you’ve deleted that folder, and it’ll work perfectly. This little alert will not happen anymore ’cause you will have removed the folder that they’re claiming already exists. Once you reinstall it, that’s it! All you have to do from there is go import your new content, and you’re up and running.
Hey, if you guys use Yoast on a consistent basis, I’ve got an entire playlist dedicated to Yoast. I’ll put the link to this in the description box below, so you can check out those videos, too. Subscribe to my channel ’cause every Wednesday I’m releasing a video just like this to help improve your online marketing inside the world of WordPress. I’ll see y’all next WordPress Wednesday. By everyone.
