Changing to a new host - handling propagation

[virtualreality]

while the new name servers propagate is it a good idea my old site to be up with the old server. If so will that create any SEO conflict with Google seeing 2 sites with same content from 2 servers? Or is it better the site in my old server to be down while the name servers propagate?

Thanks

[Lame_Wolf]

while the new name servers propagate is it a good idea my old site to be up with the old server.

Yes.

What I did was to make a slight alteration to my homepage - something only I would notice. I kept checking the site throughout the changeover period. Sometimes it would go to the old site, sometimes the new.

When it became steady - ie, kept going to the new IP, I then closed the old one down.

If you take it off too soon, your visitors could be seeing a "now-dead page" because it is going to the old address.

[virtualreality]

thank you

[RedBar]

I've just moved 40+ sites to a new host this past couple of weeks and, maybe surprisingly, did very similar to what Lame_Wolf did but in a slightly different way.

I added completely new 403/404/500 pages so I just kept checking those and as soon as they appeared the old sites were deleted.

I have to say I was quite surprised at the different propagation rates, some were in minutes, some hours and easily the slowest were .co.uk

The biggest issue I had were with a couple of sites and the emails not working immediately but that was soon sorted. I also had to go through learning Plesk from CPanel.

[dannyboy]

If you have the ability to manipulate your name server's TTL (time to live) from wherever it likely is by default to something much shorter, such as 5 minutes. This'll help you transition faster. Once you've moved you can up the TTL back to something more reasonable.

[aristotle]

Another thing you can do is to watch the visitor logs for both the old and the new locations. Visits to the new location should steadily increase in frequency, and visits to the old location should dry up within a day or two.