Transfer a Joomla website to another server

Question

We had a company that developed a website for us, for a large amount of money. When the site was done we wanted to put it up on GoDaddy's hosting and the company said that it wouldn't work on GoDaddy and that we would have to leave it on their hosting servers at a cost of $300/mo, they say that because they have custom-built software that allows the customer to edit the website, that looks just like Joomla's editor. I am about 90% sure that the website was built with Joomla. I have built many websites, none with Joomla, so my question is, I want them to just give us the website files and database that we paid for, so we can go to another hosting company with our website that is a lot cheaper $25/mo. So what files do I ask the company for that developed the website to make sure we have all the correct files to transfer the website to another hosting company?

They are being very difficult to work with so I just want to make sure I know what files to ask for.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

A Joomla install consists of files and the database so you need to ask for the files (probably as a zip file or similar) and an export of the database.

You can then restore the files and database on the destination server.

You will need to update the configuration.php file with the new database host, database name, database user and database password once you have restored the files to the destination host.

Alternatively you could ask for an Akeeba Backup file if they are using Akeeba Backup (which most Joomla website owners do). Akeeba backups up files and the database into one convenient compressed backup file which makes it easy to restore to the destination using the free Kickstart install tool.

Browsing certain urls can help verify if they are using Joomla. For example:

/administrator/manifests/files/joomla.xml
/index.php?option=com_content
/index.php?option=com_users&view=login
/index.php?option=com_search&view=search