My hosts are a liability

But if I move hosts what are the pitfalls of a lock stock transfer?

[limbo]

Over the past three months I have suffered at the hands of our current hosts. They have increasing amounts of downtime. My FTP is slowed down to crawl due to their creaking servers. The customer support is unhelpful, hard to get hold of and can even be rude and patronising. The technical staff are not much better and to top all this my predecessor decided to register all our websites and server space with them, totalling 10 sites, 35 domains. All this and they're greatly over priced and contain hidden costs too.

I have easily managed to convince the boss that it is essential we find new hosts and transfer all of our domains to them – lock stock and barrel. However, I remember how much trouble I had with them transferring 1 domain to another host some time back and I am worried this could cause me BIG problems.

So I am hoping to draw on your vast collective wisdom.

What should I know before I start to hunt down and interrogate new hosts for this sort of service?

What are the most common problems before, during and after host transfer of multiple sites?

How can I reduce the inevitable downtime associated with a move of this type?

Will I have to worry about duplicated content? Redirects?

Should we consider a dedicated server or perhaps a reseller account? (to host a minimum of 30-35 sites over next 2 years)

The 'reject' hosts will be likely to show me much less support, so do you think the new hosts will be able to take the lead? (a relative question I know, but overall..?)

I have many more questions but I'll temper the deluge for the time being :)

Thanks folks

Limbo

[Tropical Island]

There are more experienced members here than I however the most important thing you should do is to make sure you don't cut the current one off until all the sites have been moved and the various indexing bots find the new servers. This can take some time.

Leave your current sites on the old servers. Upload your sites to the new servers. Change the dns and then leave the old servers running for at least 30 days or until you see the main bots visting your new server.

This should keep you in the search engines.

[treeline]

Sounds like a switch would defintiely be worthwhile. Ask around about good hosting companies. There are some. I'd suggest one with toll-free 24 hour phone service that is always answered by a human being with at least a moderate clue.

Make sure you have copies of all the website pages downloaded to your location, ready to be uploaded in the event of any problems. Special care here needs to be taken for databases.

Have the new host assign you an IP number. You can use this to upload (and test, please test) your entire sites before telling the old host. Leave info on the old host, and switch the DNS settings to your new host.

Watch everything carefully. Don't expect much help from the old host.

[limbo]

Thanks Tropical/Treeline

You have confirmed my fears. I see that holding onto the old hosts for a month or so would be a good idea. We have No.1 / 2 spots on all the big'uns and I'd hate to jeopordise that.

What about duplicate content? Will I be penalised for having the sites on both the old and new servers?

I'd suggest one with toll-free 24 hour phone service that is always answered by a human being with at least a moderate clue.

Absolbloodylutley! One of my main requirements is excellent customer service.

And for webspace? Purchase a dedicated server? I am looking for clues becasue I am the web department and do not have the site management experience, yet.

Ta

[Tropical Island]

What about duplicate content? Will I be penalised for having the sites on both the old and new servers?

As the DNS changes and the bots move to your new servers they will not see duplicate content - as they will no longer be visiting the old site.

[limbo]

That would make sense ;)

[treeline]

Duplicate content should be no issue. For perhaps two days some people will see one, the rest will see the other. But not both. The changeover should be complete within two days. I'd just keep the old host active a little longer in case the new one stopped working for some mysterious unexpected reason.

If you don't need a dedicated server, you can get a virtual dedicated server with cpanel (or other control programs) pretty cheap and have most of the flexibility at a very low cost. These are sometimes advertised to resellers too. I've had pretty good luck with this approach.

[limbo]

If you don't need a dedicated server, you can get a virtual dedicated server with cpanel (or other control programs) pretty cheap and have most of the flexibility at a very low cost.

Thanks. We don't need a dedicated server as far as I can tell. A Virtual Server sounds better - also known as multi site package, right?

I have signed up with a host who offers free service for 30 days - see what I can glean from them. The virtual host package they offer seems like a good deal: £300 per year, 20 sites, unlimited FTP, control panel, webaliser, php, mysql.... They will transfer my domain for free too. Also very helpful support staff - I rang them (24/7) with a fake problem just to see if they would take interest in someone who is not a paying customer. And got 5star response - they took the time to understand the problem, astutely identified the solution without once mentioning sales.