Marcia - 7:44 pm on Sep 28, 2002 (gmt 0)

It takes up to 72 hours for a domain name to resolve to it's numerical address.

1. Put up a temporary index.html page at the new host

2. Get the other parts of the site uploaded without being linked to from that page.

3. Put in a robots.txt file excluding robots from the new site until the site is moved.

4. When it's all working properly at the new host:

4a. Put a "moved" notice on your ISP site pointing to the index page at your new host. Avoid getting caught with duplicate content at both.

4b. Get the index page up at the new site

4c. Remove the robots.text exclusion

4d. Contact those who link to you to change their links to the new URL. Search engines will find you through the links.

4e. If you have an ODP listing for the old URL, submit a change when it's all working properly.

If you slip out of search engines temporarily, don't panic. You'll get back in. Don't even ask how long that will take, the only one that's predictable is Google, and that can take 60 days.