Changing Web Hosts

Why change web hosts?

You no longer need to put up with 75% uptime or tickets that get resolved in a week. If you don't receive great customer service and support from your web host, there are hundreds of good web hosts out there that are "customer-hungry" and would love to have you as their client.

The thing is that people stay with a less than great performing host because they are afraid. They are afraid that moving the web site(s) and databases and email accounts will result in disruptions and downtime for the visitors and of course more hassle for them. This should not be the case! You already know how to upload your website, how to make new email accounts and how to backup and upload database. And here are the steps to follow in order to make the transition as "safe" and as smooth as possible.

Step 1. Prepare

A website can be developed using different programming languages and web technologies, so before looking for a new web host, write down what web technologies were used to develop the website. Make sure that the new host has or is willing to install appropriate versions of these programming languages, otherwise parts of your website might not work as expected.

If you have a busy website and you're changing to a shared hosting account, ask the new host if they "approve" the web site. Phone or email them with the website's details such as: average traffic per month or average number of visitors per day.

Before moving the website(s) and everything else, do a local backup. In the cPanel - Other Options article we talk about backups; from simple FTP files transfers to databases backup using the hosting account control panel cPanel.

Step 2. Move

Deploy the website on your new hosting server. Use FTP or whatever tool you used for the backup to move the files to the new server. Keep the same directories structure or if you need to change it make sure that all the affected links and scripts paths are updated. Here's an article about how to find broken links.

Login to your control panel and create the databases; upload the databases backups to populate the tables (not needed if you have a static website). Create email accounts to match the old email accounts and import the email filters from backups (in case you had any). In case you had domains and sub-domains, protected directories, etc. use the control panel to recreate the settings.

Last step is to change the DNS servers to match the IP address of the new web host. The information needed to change the DNS servers should be in the confirmation email received when you signed up for the hosting account. Hint: when changing the name servers try to lower your DNS TTL (Time To Live) to like 15-30 minutes.

Note 1: If your website is static or doesn't experience heavy database activity, the database transfer will not be a problem. However, if you run a big forum or e-commerce site, you'll need to do extra work to keep the two databases systems synchronized. A quick solution to keep the databases in sync when you move servers is to first import the current DB into the new host, and then set the scripts on the old host to use the new host's database path and login details. That way no matter which server people hit, the scripts will access the same database (from the new server).

Note 2: If you're moving to a different domain name the recommended way to do it is to put a 301 (permanent) redirect on every page on the old domain to point to the corresponding page on the new domain.

Step 3. Verify

Before shutting down the old site, verify that the transition was a success and everything's running smoothly. Look at the following aspects:

• Check propagation. Ping the domain name and see if it replies with the new IP address. It usually takes up to two days, but you can see the first results in one or two hours.
• Website functionality. Once you open the website from the new web server, test different functions by adding, removing, editing entries, posting comments, etc. to make sure the scripts and databases are working.
• Test your email accounts. Check to see if you can receive and send emails from the newly created email accounts.
• Look again for broken links.
• Change DNS TTL back to the original value or to a higher value (i.e. 1 day).
• Shut down the old website.

Summary

To summarize what has been said so far, to move to a new web host "safely" follow these steps:

• Check website compatibility with the new web host (resources needed and technologies used);
• Create local backups (copy files, backup databases);
• Deploy the web site on the new hosting server;
• Recreate databases, email accounts and email filters;
• Recreate settings such as: protections, cron jobs, etc.;
• Change DNS servers;
• Check propagation of the new IP address;
• Test website functionality, email accounts, etc.;
• Look for broken links;
• Shut down the old website.