Moving Away from Plesk: What to Take and What Not to Forget

Plesk backups restore fully only into Plesk, so moving a site to ISPmanager or another panel means taking it apart and reassembling it on the new server. It is not hard, but a few details decide whether your mail and DNS survive the move.

Where Plesk keeps things

On Linux, each domain lives in /var/www/vhosts/misol.uz/ with the site itself in httpdocs. Databases sit on MySQL or MariaDB and mailboxes in the server's mail service, which a shared hosting user usually cannot access directly. Plesk also runs on Windows: an ASP.NET site with MS SQL cannot simply be copied to Linux PHP hosting, so confirm the platform first.

Example: a private school in Bukhara

A school runs a Joomla site on Plesk with news, teacher pages and an admission form. The Plesk server also hosts DNS for misol.uz, and staff use @misol.uz mail. The classic mistake here is to move the site, switch nameservers and watch mail stop, because the MX and other records stayed behind on the old server.

Files

Archive httpdocs in the Plesk file manager and download one file, or with SSH:

cd /var/www/vhosts/misol.uz
tar -czf ~/maktab-fayllar.tar.gz -C httpdocs .

FTP works too, but thousands of small files transfer slowly.

Databases

Open phpMyAdmin separately for each database from the Databases section; using one database's phpMyAdmin for another can show it as empty or export the wrong one. Choose the Custom export method and enable enclosing table and column names in backquotes, otherwise columns named with reserved words like order or key break the import. With SSH:

mysqldump --single-transaction --default-character-set=utf8mb4 \
  -u maktab_user -p maktab_db | gzip > ~/maktab_db.sql.gz

Check that the file ends with -- Dump completed; if not, the export was cut short.

DNS records first

If Plesk hosts your DNS, copy every record before changing nameservers: A and AAAA (including www, mail and subdomains), MX, TXT (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, service verification) and any CNAME or SRV records. Confirm from outside as well:

dig misol.uz MX +short
dig misol.uz TXT +short
dig www.misol.uz A +short

Switch nameservers only after the new zone is complete. In the sayt.uz account this is done on the domain's DNS page, where nameservers are changed too.

Mail

imapsync connects to the old and new mailbox at the same time and copies messages with their folders. You need each mailbox password; if unknown, reset it in Plesk and give the user the new one.

imapsync --host1 eski-server.example.uz --user1 direktor@misol.uz --password1 'ESKI_PAROL' \
         --host2 mail.example.uz --user2 direktor@misol.uz --password2 'YANGI_PAROL' \
         --ssl1 --ssl2

Run it once before the switch and again a day or two later; the second pass copies only new messages.

Configuration paths

Joomla's configuration.php stores absolute log and temp paths that still point to /var/www/vhosts/... after the move:

public $host = 'localhost';
public $db = 'maktab_db';
public $user = 'maktab_user';
public $password = 'yangi-parol';
public $log_path = '/var/www/foydalanuvchi/data/www/misol.uz/administrator/logs';
public $tmp_path = '/var/www/foydalanuvchi/data/www/misol.uz/tmp';

Also copy any custom nginx or Apache directives entered in Plesk's settings; they are not part of the site files and redirects or security rules often live there.

Final checks

Test through your hosts file and submit the admission form, since form emails depend on mail settings. Then switch DNS, issue SSL once the domain resolves to the new IP, and keep the old Plesk account for a week or two while you run imapsync one last time.