Moving Day! Tips for Changing Web Hosts

Moving your web hosting server from one site to another is not an activity anyone looks forward to. Multiple domain names web hosting will make moving day even more complicated. No one likes to move and moving a website can be as nerve racking as moving to a new house. Your move may have been precipitated by one or a number of factors, including poor service from your present host or your server has a lot of down time, you need more bandwidth or you're paying too much.

Just like you do when you're moving your belongings from one house to another, you have to organize all aspects of the move to make sure nothing is forgotten.Commensus hold all the keys to your virtual business server hosting success.

Develop a Move Check List

Before the move there are a number of things you have to do. First and foremost, make two manual backups of the site on two different computers. Second, make an announcement on your site so your site visitors will know about your moving day well in advance of the move.

Then of course you have to make sure you have all the necessary information from your new host, including web hosting FTP information, web hosting and email information, DNS numbers to re-point your domain, a temporary URL for the site so you can check functioning while the domain is re-pointing, and server paths for any scripts you will be running.

Then you have to start copying your files and checking all your internal links to make sure they don't have coded URLs to the old web address. Once you start moving websites and uploading your pages to your new host test all the pages as you go.

Update Records With Registrar

If you have your own domain name update your DNS records with your registrar once you are satisfied your new site works the way it's supposed to. The registrars tell you the update will be done in 48 hours but it may take a week for all the name servers to find your new domain location. Keep your old site up while this is going on and keep monitoring your website downtime, or the time when people can't find it.

Don't redirect visitors from your old site to your new until you are sure everything is working. If some ISPs haven't made the switch yet, a visitor clicking on the new site may be directed right back to the old one. The best bet is to run both sites for a week before telling your old host you have moved.

If you had your own domain name and you moved it with your site all you have to do is close the account with your old host.

Continue to: Ideal Methods to Follow for Domain Names Web Hosting