Changing host

Whats the smoothest route?

[gsx]

I am unhappy with a poor web host. They think they they are doing great at an 80% uptime.

Obviously, I am considering changing.

My thoughts on the smoothest route are this:

1) Buy hosting on it's own with another host
2) Request transfer of the domain name(s)
3) Wait for a few months
4) When Google updates it's IP addresses and all ISPs have done the same, cancel the account with the old supplier.

Can anybody see any problems with this course of action, or is there a better way of doing it? I will be paying for two hosts at the same time if I follow the above route, but it is a business site and needs to be running as much as possible.

[Dpeper]

I just moved my site and ill tell you what i did

I set up my new acct and had my site fully up then redirected the DNS then i set up a redirect for the ip adress on the old hosting acct im only planning on paying that for one more month. Ill have to see how it works out in the google update when it starts.

Donny

[richlowe]

I've changed 12 times in 12 months (there are lots of bad hosts out there). The steps I take are:

1) Get new host
2) move site to new host
3) transfer domain
4) Give it a week
5) put redirect pages in old host
6) give it a few more weeks (about a month)
7) delete old host

Although I've had to emergency move twice and Google didn't have any problems following my site with no notice of the move, with 4 days downtime and with no redirects.

Richard Lowe

[gcross]

I had a slightly different issue on this subject when I switched two sites from Geocities.com to westhost.com . One domain name was already registered, by Geocities, the other I had registered through westhost.com . I was able to get my westhost registered site up and running in under a week but it took considerable searching on Geocities and emails before I obtained the passwords necessary to update my Geocities registered domain information in order to transfer it to westhost.

So I would suggest step Number One is to contact your CURRENT host and obtain the domain name registry stuff, especially passwords, then access it and change passwords immediately, giving yourself complete control of your domain name registration. THEN set up an account with a new host, provide the domain info sans passwords, they should email you the info you need to update your domain registration. Then upload your current website material to the new host and start terminating the old host. If it was a freebie site, like Geocities, if you weren't paying for the hosting, just upload redirect pages to the old host and leave it at that. I did.

:)