How to Switch Your Website to a New Web Hosting Company
Friday, September 19th, 2008Perhaps your business is growing faster than your web hosting company can keep up with or maybe your chosen site just isn’t up to par with your sites’ needs. In any case, the best solution to this conundrum is to switch web hosting companies. Before you dive blindly into what can be a sea of confusion, there are a few steps you should take to ensure the transition from one site provider to another is seamless and worry-free.
Switching to a new web hosting company will go smoother if you create and follow a detailed plan, just like with other sorts of renovation undertakings. In order to ensure a smooth and efficient transfer from one web hosting company to another make sure you give yourself plenty of time to understand, complete and then test each step of the process.
From the time your new site is up and running to the initial planning stage, requires 3 to 4 weeks. After you’ve thoroughly researched and identified your potential business-partner site, your new site can be up and running within 24-48 hours.
The first, and most important, step at this stage is to ensure you do a secure and complete backup of all the files on your current web hosting provider’s site regardless of whether or not you have the files stored on a local computer. Backups are like insurance, you never appreciate having them until a catastrophe strikes. So, even though it may be tempting to eliminate this step, you may live to regret it.
You should always back up all important files. These files include HTML files, script, and database and server log files. To increase transition efficiency and simplify file downloads, create a directory structure that mirrors your web server’s.
You are ready to upload your files to the new server after you receive confirmation from your new web hosing company that your file transfer protocol precedures are operational and your account has been activated.
It is easiest to upload information to a new site by saving files somewhere familiar.
After following the above steps you may now run some tests on the other website to be able to verify that all modules are working perfectly.
The new web hosting company will provide the new Domain Name Server (DNS); once everything is working properly you can change your old one. The only thing left to do is relax back and let the hits begin.