13 Things to do before Breaking up with your Web Host
Agreed, it’s a pain in more places than one when you have to migrate from one web host to the other, but when your needs grow and your current host fails to keep up, it’s best to do the dumping as soon as possible. But before you sever all ties, you must protect what’s yours and make sure your site is up and running without a hitch at your new host. Here’s a list of 13 things you must do before you dump your web host:
1. It’s obvious, but has to be said. Find a new web host and make sure that it meets all your needs.
2. Check if you have enough storage space, enough bandwidth to prevent crashes and down times, support for the operating system and applications that run on your server, support for scripts and an adequate number of email accounts and auto responders.
3. The next thing to do is back up everything on your server to a secure location. You don’t want to be left holding an empty tub looking like a fool when you realize you’ve thrown out both the baby and the bathwater. Make sure you get all your email, databases and website files.
4. Upload all your files and databases to the new server and make sure you retain all the file permissions as they were on your old one so that you don’t end up with scripting errors.
5. Get your new web host to test the scripts, contact pages, and databases your website before you make the necessary DNS change.
6. Before you update your DNS to point browsers to the new location of your site, you need to plan for the downtime that results from this procedure. DNS updates take up to 48 hours to spread to all DNS servers on the Internet.
7. Let your customers and website visitors know of this planned upgrade. Make the move when your servers are expected to be the least busy.
8. To reduce down time as much as possible, make DNS changes before you move the domain. Before you do this though, check to see if your mail server is running on the new host so that you don’t lose any email messages.
9. If your domain name was registered using a third party domain name registration company, you need to check if your domain name is a part of your old hosting plan. If it is, you must separate the two, since moving your site to a new web host means that your domain name company remains the same while your web host changes.
10. If your site is dynamic, DNS update delays can cause havoc if you’re not careful. Some customers may see your old site while others have access to the new one. To minimize such occurrences, close down your old site with an alert so that it becomes static while the move to the new one is being made. You could also use a synchronization tool to get changes made on the old site mirrored on the new one.
11. Check for incompatibility issues between applications on your old server and your new one.
12. If you have more than one domain to migrate, make sure you start the process with enough time to spare for the DNS update delays.
13. Make sure all the visitors to your old site are being redirected to your new site before cancelling your current web host. It’s best to keep both sites up and running in parallel for at least two weeks before saying goodbye to your old hosts.
This web hosting blog post is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of web design schools. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.
Great one.
Really a worth. Each website owners must think of it and it is advicable for the webhosting vendors to make their customers know about this. “Every customer is king”.
Great tips!
It is hard to break away from a bad host. The problem is once you have several sites with a provider, its too late for it not to be a big pain. I think most newer webmasters do not research the hosting providers. After one bad experience, webmasters tend to learn and research before they go to a new hosting provider.
Nice article, Sarah!
We have so many people who sign up for accounts with ClickHOST because they’re leaving some other host..and inevitably, they just cut and run and wonder why their site is down.
I’m going to refer people to this article and hopefully save them some grief!
Yes, this is a nice post and most companies will not allow the customer to choose another host. With these details they can be cautious before they buy hosting from companies.
But you forgot the most important step – Canceling with your old hosting provider. No reason to give them more money for a service that is bad and that you aren’t going to be using anyway.
Prior to planning the move, I would recommend reviewing your current web hosts Terms and Conditions. It’s often a step on the sign-up form you just check and don’t review. When it comes to parting ways these terms may have you locked into an agreement or payment plan for a set period of time.
One other thing to keep in mind is that many web hosts host in the same co-lo. This means the core infrastructure is shared (the datacenter itself, the power, the backup power, the diesel supply, security, core routers, etc.) So if you’re going to switch web host because they suffered an outage, there’s a good chance other web hosts were affected too. Make sure you ask where they host. If they have their own datacenter, then great – make sure those items I mentioned between the ( ) are redundant in their datacenter. And if they collocate (co-locate?) with a provider, you need to rethink where you’re going to.
If you operate multiple websites, it’s best to split them up between datacenters and build some redundancy that way. You’ll at least have a working secondary location should the first one go up in smokes, goes out of business, or you just up and quit them.
Nice article & tips.. GoDaddy is one host that is very hard to switch from because some things will not be compatible with other hosts… I was not pleased with my experience with Godaddy but I have had good luck with HostMonster.
Great article. It’s not very hard to find good hosting company, you just have to spend a couple of hours reading reviews and comparing hosting programs and you will reach a decision. I am very satisfied with my hosting. I tried GoDaddy but it sucks, I payed a deluxe plan and I couldn’t even creat email addresses. That sucks. And now for $1 more i have unlimited disk space/domains/bandwith, that’s awesome
try free web host. they are free as well as risk free. You will get services like paid hosting. You can also experience the look of paid hosting.
sagib.com.np/free-web-hosting
I believe web hosting builds trust with the provider and the end-user. So its really frustrating to jump from one provider to another. But if it cannot be avoided for some reasons, an affordable yet excellent web hosting provider should be a turning point.