Transferring a Website From One Web Host to Another
A lot of websites face problems just because of their hosts. That is why one shouldn’t pay for a particular hosting without reading some honest reviews. However, once you have made a bad decision, things can still be fixed by transferring the website to a new host. Switching hosts can be very hard but in the end you get a fast and responsive website. Once you have decided to move your website, you should start looking for a good hosting company so that the same problems don’t arise in future. This article has been written to help you transfer your website without running into problems.
If your website crashes then you visitors will get affected. Therefore you ought to tell your visitors that the site can go down. This will give them some time to get ready for any downtime. Announcing the exact date and time of the move is even better. On the other hand if you tell them nothing and your website goes down then there is nothing more frustrating than that. Your customers should be you first priority, even if you own an online business.
– Take a full backup of your website. It should include all the files, databases, email forwarders etc. Download the backup file and save it in a secure place on you computer. This step is very important because during transition you might lose some files. Having an extra copy of everything will give you some peace of mind.
– In your new hosting account you can use the default “Restore” feature to put everything in place. Please note that this option exists in cPanel which is the most common web hosting control panel. However, if you need to transfer your site by using some other control panel then you should ask your web host to help you.
Now it’s time to change the nameservers of your domain so that it becomes linked with the new hosting account. You can edit the nameservers by logging into your domain’s backend. Nameserver propagation can take a lot of time so you’ll have to wait. Meanwhile you should keep your previous web hosting account. You should only delete the previous account after three to four days.
The process mentioned above is the most basic method of transferring a website from one host to another. If your website is too big or are not very comfortable with technical stuff then it is a better idea to hand over the job to your hosting company. These days some hosting companies even transfer websites for free. Of course if such an option exists, there is no need to go through the grueling process given above.
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