How To Change Website Hosting

by John Vopel

You always have the right to change your web host provider whenever you want. Sometimes your current host provider's equipment becomes outdated and you end up with a lot of site down time. Then perhaps another reason is, you have just found a cheaper host. If you have paid your current host by the year, you should make sure that you did not lock yourself into a yearly contract and will not be able to get your unused money back.

Host changing is not an easy job, so do give it some serious thought, that it is really what you want to do. You can run into all kinds of issues. The following are some steps that you can take to help your transition go smoothly. Do not terminate your current plan until each of these steps has been fully carried out.

Step One: Once you have decided you are going to be changing hosts then you must take your time with the transfer. If you rush it, there is a good chance you may make some mistakes. These could be costly mistakes and as result, keep your site down until you get them straightened out. You are going to want to download every single file you have in your website, including your html and graphic files. You will know that all of your files have been stored in a precise directory structure. Be sure and follow this exact structure as you download.

Step Two: What type of site do you have, basic html or with lots of specific features? You need to consider your site needs, before selecting a host that can provide what you need. These days many hosts do allow you to either handle the domain name change yourself or otherwise. Your domain name should not get switched faster than you can get your new files transferred, so you may as well want to handle the domain name change yourself. Your new web hosting account usually will be set up within 24 hours.

Step Three: Backups are Critical . Backup absolutely everything you have on your website. In fact make two copies. Then you have one to work with during your transition, and the original is left in tact. This way if anything goes wrong with the working copy, you can get rid of it, recopy the original and start over again. In addition try to create your new directory as closely structured to the old one as possible. This makes the download go much smoother.

Step Four: The Upload: Your new hosting company most likely gave you a temporary location where you can up load and work on your website. This is really good because you can get all the prepatory work done, although you won't be able to publish as yet. This must all be done before you change your domain name. While you are doing this open up a "catchall" email. This way you don't lose your email contacts.

Step Five: It doesn't matter what registrar you used to register your domain, you can initiate the name change. Technically speaking the only thing that changes in your record is the name server information. Updating the technical contact info on your domain name record to your new host is also a good idea, although that is not mandatory.

Step Six: Confirmation You must receive at least one confirmation email for you name change. You will note the change somewhere between 24-48 after the change. It will take the same time for all DNS servers to note your new domain location. This is called a propagation period. Once this is all in place you can cancel the services of the prior host.

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