Forum Moderators: phranque
How do I change from my actual hosting to another?
First of all, it's easy and you will not loose traffic or emails, nothing. It's ok.
What do I do first?
First search for a reliable hosting company (that's the hard part).
What company should I pick?
Pick one with 3 or more years in market, and don't pick for the price. If you need to: compare but priorize good support you will need it sooner or later. Do they have phone support, better.
Do they have ticket system based on a time compromise?
Do they have areas in their sites dedicated to support or just to sales?
Can you recommend some?
No. But I still trying to find a good one with so much hope! ;)
Ok I got a new hosting now what?
Purchase your plan and set up new site according their instructions, usually they explain in a welcome email what to do. Usually you need to delegate the dns to point to the new hosting company in order to start your moving and users visit the "new hosting" where your pages should be uploaded.
Be sure to start uploading all your files to the new ftp (user, pass, server info all that information should be provided for the new company)
If you want also setup email in the same way (even if you need to duplicate an account in your Outlook, you can delete the useless later)
Updating your DNS (Name Servers) with different Domain Registrar
Go to your registrar website Godaddy or whatever it is, login, and go to section where dns changes can be made (if you have a "My account" area starting there would be a good idea) and pick "Name servers" or the most similar you find there.
You need to change nameserver1 and nameserver 2.
They are fields that look like this:
park1.server.net
park2.server.net
(those are bogus names)
put there the info your new hosting company gives you or ask to them the dns servers:
newcompany.server.com
newcompany2.server.com
Save changes and it's done.
Nothing happens!
Wait some 48 hs (sometimes less sometimes more) - I waited almost a week once!-
The dns needs to spread, that means users will see your old hosted page and gradually will start to reach the new hosting server. So your pages need to be there uploaded by ftp or filemanager according the data the new company gave to you.
That means your files will be duplicated in 2 servers (your old hosting company and the new one)
But when they are spreaded for good, your old ftp files in old hosting company can be safely deleted (by them or you if you keep the ftp access using the old ip, user and pass)
So nobody will notice the change, uh?
That's right. To users is the same thing, they will type your url (www.yoursite.com) and they will find your website wether be in the old hosting or the new one. Search engines will do the same thing.
Theres's no reason for you to stick with a bad company.
They are all over but you can pick where to host freely.
A final warning
Nobody notice that generally, but is very very important in some countries when you register a domain to do it using an independant email adress.
What do I mean with independant? DO NOT use an adress like user@mysiteiwillhost.com,
USE an address not affected to a site you plan to host, like user@hotmail.com or user@myispprovider.com
Why? Some registrars only let you change your dns information entering the authorized email to do so by internet.
If your hosting just doesn't work your email will not work either and you won't be able to make the change.
You are stuck then.
If your authorized email account to make the change has nothing to do with a hosted domain, you always will be able to change dns, and thus hosting provider.
Again I hope this helps you!
This allows you to upload a copy of your site to the new server and test it before making any DNS changes. You simply access your new server by its IP address instead of using your domain name. e.g. ftp://192.168.0.1/httdocs/ or http:192.168.0.1/. Once you are satisified that this copy of your site is working on the new server, you can then proceed to updating the DNS settings to point your domain to the new IP address.
As far as finding good hosting, it's tough. The best advice I can think of is to always sign up on a monthly basis for the first month, and then switch to a quarterly or yearly plan once you are satisfied with the host. This costs a bit more, but leaves you with more options.
stargeek,
Having had my IP addresses changed 'involuntarily' on several sites when the host reallocated customers to different servers to even out their server loading, I've never had any problems with search engines as a result. While they may 'note' that your IP address has changed, and possibly cache your old IP address for awhile, their basic spidering method is based on domains, not on IP addresses. Problems can be avoided by leaving your site up on the old server for a few weeks after moving to the new one.
Jim
I would also be a little concerned about how the search engines will handle your IP change.
Moving mydomain.com from aaa.aa.a.aaa to bbb.bb.b.bbb won't change a thing, as long as the content and in-links haven't changed (and as long as your competitors' content and in-links haven't changed significantly either).
I've changed IPs three or four times, and have never had any problems with my rankings.
Eliz.
I've just switched servers, moving from one unique ip to another.
Thus far I have seen no loss in search engine ranking on any of the engines. I did notice that googlebot and slurp found the new ip immediately, but msnbot was a little slow, took two days. (strangely my msn rankings have been up since the change, probably unrelated)
Question, how long should I keep the files at the old host? I'd quite like to just leave them there as backup, but was worried about tripping some kind of duplicate content filter.
good point, and good to know that there have been people who've had no issues with the SE's and changing IPs.
perhaps that means i'll make the host move i've been putting off for a long time.
...how long should I keep the files at the old host?
After that point, I'd take down the old copy from the old host, but only because I wouldn't want to keep paying for two hosts. Since the spiders will go to the nameservers to find the IP for your domain name, they will never "find" your old copy. The old site would not be viewable as "mydomain.com/index.htm" (since your domain name no longer points there); its address would now be "oldhost.com/~username/index.htm", which isn't what the spider (or anybody else) is looking for. I don't see how anybody could view the now-invisible old copy as "duplicating" anything. Nobody will ever see it.
Eliz.
If you try to skimp on the monthly fees, you will find that the hoster also has skimped on backend stuff, on how many sites they pack onto a shared server, on the talent level of the sys admins and techs, and so on. It costs money to supply everything, if it's cheap then the hoster must skimp to generate profit, even if their stuff works decently.
One thing I've found is that on shared hosting that runs urchin stats, there is always skimping because of the extremely high licensing fees of urchin.
The best shared hosting I've seen runs about 150 sites per dual processor server, this is a fraction of what most hosters out there run.
Things to watch out for, run from these:
unlimited bandwidth
unlimited disk space
Things to watch out for, run from these: unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space
This warning stems from the fact that, just due to the physics of servers and pipelines, there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth or disk space. So, if a hosting company's site is offering this, either the staffers don't know what they're doing, or else they're not being entirely honest. Either way, that host is probably not the best prospect.
Eliz.
Leave it up until you have seen the 'bots visit the new server several times. I'd recommend making a small change in the content of at least one page -- a change you can spot in the search engines' cached version of your page. Once that change shows up in their cache, it's relatively safe to take the old server down. But don't be in a big hurry; The old server is not 'reachable' by domain name any more, and thus does not constitute 'duplicate content'. Also, as I implied above, some search engines cache DNS information for several days, and so may continue to spider your old server instead of the new one for a few days after a DNS switchover is complete. My rule of thumb is to leave the old server up for two weeks at a minimum.
Jim
does anyone have any experience changing IPs for a domain and keeping or not-keeping ranks?
I've move shared IP sites to new shared IP hosting several times without a hitch.
A few months ago, however, I had a site with a dedicated IP and moved it to a new host with shared IPs (it just slipped my mind). Within a couple of days page views went from 600-1100/day down to 20-30. Of course it could be coincidence but it seems suspicious. (BTW no I haven't gotten around to getting it back to a dedicated IP. I probably should though)
