There are several reasons why you may have to move your website from your current host to a new hosting provider. You may require extra features which your current web hosting provider does not offer or you may be looking for a web hosting company that offer a high quality web space with features such as PHP, MySQL, CGI, SSI and 24/7 technical support. Whatever your reasons for moving, the process of changing hosts and transferring databases and files can be accomplished quite smoothly. If you have never undertaken this type of task before you may easily underestimate the amount of work involved. This article intends to provide you with some of the important steps involved in transferring your website to a new web hosting provider.
Step 1 – Make A Full Copy Of All Your Website Pages And Files
It is always good webmaster practice to maintain a full offline backup of your website. Even if you do have this available, the first thing you should do is download a full copy of the entire website before you do anything else and save it onto your computer. To copy your website files, use your preferred FTP program that you use to normally upload files and simply download them instead. If you do not have FTP access and your current host provides you with a browser based online file manager use this to download your files.
Step 2 – Back-Up Your Database
If your site is database driven or otherwise utilises databases, make a backup and save this to your computer. Creating a back up of your MySQL database and exporting to your computer is easily accomplished through phpMyAdmin.
Step 3 – Upload Files To Your New Web-Space
During this time, you website will still be live with the old web host, DO NOT delete it yet. Your new host will normally provide you with access to your new web-space either via an IP address or through a temporary sub-domain. Using the access details provided by your new web host connect to your web-space using your FTP client and upload all your files. If applicable, set up and restore your MySQL databases and reconfigure any script configuration files. At this point, thoroughly test all internal and external hyperlinks, connections to scripts and databases etc. Remember, the more testing and proving you can do at this stage, the less likelihood you have of loosing visitors in the future.
Step 4 – Change Your Name-Servers
Assuming you have your own domain name, you will need to configure it to point to your new web-space. Your new web host will provide you with details of their nameservers. If your previous host provided you with control panel access to DNS management functions you can change the settings yourself, if not contact your existing domain name registrar and request that the nameservers are changed. You should normally allow up to 48 hours for the nameserver changes to propagate throughout the internet.
Step 5 – The New Site Is Live
Once the DNS changes have become fully effective and your site is live on the new web host there is little more you need to do other than terminate your hosting contract with the old host. As far as search engines and visitors are concerned they should not realise you have changed web hosting providers as no URL’s will have been affected. If you have moved from a free host, the likelihood is that your URL’s will have changed, in these cases it may be wise to keep your old account running and set up simple redirects to your new domain. This is even more important if you have a lot of inbound links.
Summary
Follow these simple steps and moving your website and domain to a new host can be done quite seamlessly and with minimal disruption. Provided you don’t change any URL’s you should not lose any visitors or search engine placements or rankings.