Tips to Change Webhosting Service Provider

Posted by admin | tips | Tuesday 20 July 2010 8:13 pm

There can be many reasons why one wants to change ones web hosting provider like discontented with the service provided by current web hosting provider or one have discovered a provider offering better deal or your online business has simply outgrown your present provider. Any of these reasons is good to change web-hosting provider. Find below few steps how to switch web site from one web host to another in the right way with no or as little aggravation as possible.

Step 1. Things one has to consider to change webhosting provider is

• Finding a web host who can meet all the requirements. Though one already has an experience in finding web host provider from last search, one has to just review the main issues.

• Proper attention should be given to the disk space and bandwidth future plan will provide.

• Purchase a little more bandwidth than required but be careful not to exceed traffic quota.

• Whether new web hosting provider is offering the same tools and installed software as previous old one.

• Make sure with the help of technical support that the software or scripts in the offer are already installed and configured as it will be a bad experience once the website have been migrated and everything is not working properly in the website just because software does not come preinstalled and one had to request its activation.

All these above steps are very essential and one should make it clear in ones mind that one doesn’t have to go through this entire course of action of changing web hosts real soon in the future.

• Signing up for the new hosting plan. – While still having about two weeks for the old hosting plan to expire always sign up for the new hosting plan so that one gets time to react if anything goes wrong during the migration of your web site and thus maintain continuity of business and at the same time smoothen the transition for visitors or customers

One should update backup copy of ones website. If backup copy is not maintained by any website owner then this is the very good place to start with. Best way to take backup is to have backup copy of your web site burned onto a compact disk CD. This CD should be stored in a safe area.

Backup should include the entire web site: files, images, directory structure, databases. Once the backup has been taken upload the website to web servers of new webhosting provider. Now its time to test the new hosting plan. Almost all web hosting providers give you the facility to preview website before it goes live. One should test whether their sites look good and its functionalities all intact on new web server. One should try writing down the new POP3 and SMTP that one would be using soon. Try configuring existing e-mail accounts on the new web server.

Mark the web pages on your new web server just to differentiate from the old one if website design is the same. With this one is able to tell when the DNS information is updated, which is the next step of migrating a web site.

Change the web name server. Inform your visitors and customers about the new web-hosting provider you would be making by apologizing for any possible inconvenience of downtime, which web site might encounter. This announcement is very important for image of ones web business.

After completing the above process change DNS information if one change it by its own or ask the registrar to change the DNS information.

Till DNS information propagate across all the DNS servers one have to wait for it. It is possible to start seeing the first results after a couple of hours even though the entire process could take as much as 72 hours to complete.

Now finally just update the e-mail client one has been using to match the new POP3 and SMTP settings.

This way one can successfully change the web-hosting provider. Good wishes for the new hosting provider.