Step by step guide to moving your Web site
If you’re moving your Web site to a new Web hosting company, you’ll find that though it can take a bit of effort, it’s not all that difficult.
There are basically five steps:
1. Open up a new hosting account and copy your files.
Keep your old one active for now. The reason for this is that you’ll be recreating your site on the new Web hosting company’s server. They’ll likely give you an IP address (a number something like 111.111.11.1 to start uploading and test it out on). Then, test the site - try all kinds of combinations - click on links, than click other links to move around the site. If it’s a relatively small site, you should be able to test all of the links to make sure everything’s working.
This is often a good time to do a bit of a cleanup in your directories as well. If you start by making a copy of the directory that holds the Web site content on your hard drive, just upload what you need. Then, get rid of any files you don’t need anymore (if you need those files, you’ll have them in your original directory).
2. Transfer your domain to the new web host.
When everything’s working right and you’re ready to transfer your site, you’ll need to make a change to the name servers (sometimes referred to as DNS) for your domain. Ask your new Web hosting company what their name servers are for your site.
They’ll often have them on the site, or the technical support department will be happy to give you the server names.
Once you’ve got them, you have to update them with the domain registrar. Contact, or visit the site of the company that registered your domain. If you’re not sure who registered your domain, you can go to http://www.netsol.com and do a “whois” search. They’ll tell you which company the domain is registered with, or if it’s registered with themselves (Network Solutions).
Head to the site of the company that registered your domain. In some cases, you can log in to an administation area to update them, in some cases, you’ll have to send an e-mail.
3. Confirm the changes to the domain.
The domain registrar will usually send you a message to confirm the change. Make sure you read it carefully to see if you need to approve anything.
4. Wait for propagation.
Once your domain is switched over (usually a couple of days), don’t go close down your old account right away. Wait a week or so, until all ISP’s have switched over to the new name servers. This can take a few days and you risk, if you switch too quickly, you risk some users not being able to reach your site at all ofor a few days.
To find out if the new site is loading, you can make a small change to the site (add a word somewhere in a sentence, or change a sentence slightly) when you upload the new site at the new Web hosting company. This way, when you load it, you’ll know which Web host it is going to, but your users won’t see any difference.
5. Close down the old account.
Once you’ve waited a bit and you’re happy that everything’s working well, close down the old account. It’s taken some work, but hopefully the results pay off (whatever the reason you switched, better price, better service, better features, etc.).
Go out and buy yourself a pizza to celebrate your hard work!
Tags: hosting, web developers
