# Move Discourse to a new server without setting up the web UI first?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-discourse-to-a-new-server-without-setting-up-the-web-ui-first/76504>\
**Category:** Self-hosting\
**Created:** [December 20, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-discourse-to-a-new-server-without-setting-up-the-web-ui-first/76504 "2017-12-20T19:29:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![ffhaddad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@ffhaddad](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ffhaddad)\
**Post date:** [December 20, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-discourse-to-a-new-server-without-setting-up-the-web-ui-first/76504/1 "2017-12-20T19:29:16Z")

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Let’s say I want to move my Discourse site from one Amazon EC2 instance (e.g. t2.micro) to a larger instance (e.g. t2.medium), what is the correct procedure for this?

The only option _I know_ about is:

1. Backup the existing site
2. Install Discourse on the new server
3. Configure Discourse using _temporary_ values
4. Restore the backup

However, I’m thinking that the smart people at Discourse thought about this situation and there’s a way to restore a backup on a new installation without step 3.

Scouring the site, I wasn’t able to find a definitive answer.

I did look at [Move your Discourse Instance to a Different Server](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-your-discourse-instance-to-a-different-server/15721), but the instructions seem to imply that a generic installation is already active on the target server and that you can log in and immediately perform a restore.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-discourse-to-a-new-server-without-setting-up-the-web-ui-first/76504)._