How to Switch Hosts Smoothly

Yeah everyone hates the downtime you have when you are switching web hosts. Its like visitors don’t have a clue about what’s going on and they leave. And it really sucks if you’re trying to sell something. Maybe you just turned away a potential client or customer.

First of all, never move your site at the last minute. For example, if your hosting is expiring in 4 weeks then start finding a web host. After you found a good hosting deal. Plan on moving your site 2-3 weeks before your hosting expires.

Time to move

Okay so its time to move your site. Download all the files and/or databases from your old host to your computer. And then upload them to your new host. Make sure that everything is running. If needed bring in a team of highly trained monkeys to do some testing.

Don’t delete the files

Wait! Don’t delete the files and databases on your old host yet. Keep them just the way it is. Okay now go change the nameserver to the new host’s. It should take about 3-10 minutes for the DNS changes to take place.

How to know if you moved?

So how do you know if you have moved successfully? Hard to tell since everything went by smooth. No one knows that you moved. No crazy downtimes! Well if you want to make sure that you moved successfully then put a little HTML fill called “test.html” (and write something like “server move test”) on your new host. And then point to www.mysite.com/test.html. If you can see the file then congrats!

See how easy it is? Now say good bye to downtimes while moving hosts!

Oh and keep the files and databases on your old host for about a week or so. Just incase something goes wrong on the new host, you can then just change the nameserver and no one will notice. Smart, huh?