Export, import mysql Wordpress database

[Andreas Ash]

Hello,

Is their a proper way of exporting and importing a big Wordpress mySQL database to a new database.

When I tried to do that in the standard way I run into 2 issues:

1. All widgets disappeared and I had to create them from scratch

2. I had issues with special characters such as ' and I had to search and replace the gibberish letters

This is quite important as I need to move to a managed server from shared hosting. All apache, php, MySQL versions will be the same.

Ps: this will have to be SSH commands as phpadmin times out due to the database size.

Many thanks,
Andy