Las Vegas Internet Services (how to transfer your Web site from one web hosting company to another)

Las Vegas Internet Services

There are five easy steps involved in transferring your web site. Simple and easy if you make sure to be thorough about each step. Take the time to make checklists, ask questions and have your plan of attack ready for before, during and the time period immediately after your move. The five steps are:

1. Select
2. Backup
3. Transfer
4. Upload
5. Monitor

Select your new Web Host. Decide first what you want your web site to do. How will it support your business goals? From there put together a list of services you would like to have from your ideal cheap hosting provider. Do you want all-in-one design and development service and maybe some marketing help? If you are a web designer yourself, you might like a provider that offers reseller packages so you can offer hosting to your own clients while you design their site.

Back up your web site. This means everything! Be sure to check for scripts that you might have added to your Web site’s functionality that are server side versus sitting on your hard drive. Look at the menu of your editor if you are using one (you probably are). FrontPage uses the IMPORT feature to accomplish this. If you are a Dreamweaver user, the GET command is what you will use to copy everything. If you have a data driven Web site and use a database, create a copy that you can work with and one that your will archive. Label carefully so you don’t lose track of what is what.

Again, the first thing to do is to copy the web site files. This isn't very difficult, but there are some things to keep in mind. First, don't erase anything from the current site. At this point you don't know how long it will take to finish your move, and you don't want to break anything in the meantime. Second, you need to make sure you know how your new server is set up. Where do your files go? Do you need to have a different name for your home page? If you are using server-side includes or CGI, are they available?

Transfer your domain name. You might have gotten your domain name through the new Internet Web hosting provider you have selected. If you did, they will give you the numeric URL for the primary name and secondary name server. If you did not get your name through the new provider, get in touch with the domain name registrar where you did register your domain name and give them the new information. Propagation through the Web’s WHOIS servers takes 24 to 72 hours. Because of this time delay you will want to maintain services such as email forwarding, web pointing and web site hosting until the transfer is complete. Any domain name search facility, www.whois.net for example can give you status as you wait for the change to take effect. Another trick people sometimes use it to make slight changes to one of your web pages so you can tell from just looking at your site once it is uploaded.

Upload your Web site. When you are ready to copy your files, decide how you want to do it. If you have been building your site on a personal computer and publishing them to the remote site, it is very easy to change the publishing location and upload to the new server. If you build directly on the server, you should look into what FTP options are available. Many times you can use command-line FTP to move between two remote machines. You can also use an FTP client to move the Web site from your current server to a personal computer, then up to the new server.

Next, test your site thoroughly! Look at all of your links and pictures. Make sure none of them are still pointing to your old server. If you have always used relative links, there should be very few problems, but if you built directly on the server, use CGI and SSI to build pages, or otherwise used absolute linking, you will have to change them now. Also, if you had to change the name of your home page, you have to change all of your links to the home page as well. This part of the process is extremely important; don't be embarrassed later by a broken page!

Monitor. This applies to your Web site as well as checking on traffic at the old site (you should leave the old account active for several weeks while you are doing this). Go through you site to make sure that things look like you expected them to. Even with successful transfer of all files and pages, things happen. Test that all services work on the new provider.
If you have informed your customers and put up the appropriate notices that you have moved, you are done!

" Checklist For web sites without databases "

1. Find a new hosting provider and purchase a hosting account
2. Upload your web site content to the new hosting account. You will be able to check that it works as expected by surfing to the IP address (type the IP address into the browser instead of a domain name)
3. Login to your domain name account and change the nameservers over to your new hosting company. Typically 2 nameservers are setup - they may look like this ns1.hostingcompany.com. If you bought your domain from your current hosting company then you may have to ask them to do it.
4. It would normally take 24-48hrs for the nameservers to propagate, once they are updated your web site will automatically be served up from your new hosting company
5. Cancel your old hosting account once the nameservers have updated. A easy way to tell if they have updated is to make a slight change on the old web site, once you don't see that anymore then you know it has switched over and you can cancel your old account.

" Checklist For Web sites With A Databases "

If you have a database then you need to ensure that the database retains its integrity and no data is lost in the transfer. If you have a database that is not written to much then the switch can be close to the above scenario.

1. Find a new hosting provider and purchase a hosting account
2. Backup your database and FTP it to your development PC or your home PC
3. Upload your web site to the new hosting account. You will be able to check that it works as expected by surfing to the IP address (type the IP address into the browser instead of a domain name).
4. Create a database with the same name as your old database and the restore it using the backup file.
5. Login to your domain name account and change the nameservers over to your new hosting company. Typically 2 nameservers are setup - the look like this ns1.hostingcompany.com. If you bought your domain from your current hosting company then you may have to ask them to do it.
6. It normally takes 24-48hrs for the nameservers to update, once they do your web site will automatically be served up from your new hosting company

Ideally you should stop your web site until the nameservers update so that the database maintains its integrity. Remember until the site switches over to the new host, anybody using the existing site will write data to the database on the existing site.

One alternative is to setup the old site so that it writes to the database on the new site. Your new host will be able to help you with this.

Cancel your old hosting account once the nameservers have updated. A easy way to tell if they have updated is to make a slight change on the old web site, once you don't see that anymore then you know it has switched over and you can cancel your old account.

Las Vegas Internet Services
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How To Transfer Your Website From One Web Hosting Company To Another