Moving your web site to Fifth Gear Hosting
There are 5 steps to moving your web site to a web hosting provider like Fifth Gear Hosting. When done correctly, the change to your new web hosting provider should appear seamless to your clients. This document is to serve as a simple guide to helping you make the transition smoothly.
If you need help with any aspect of moving your web site to Fifth Gear Hosting please feel free to contact us for assistance!
Step 1 - Perform an audit of your web site.
Moving your web site is an excellent time to perform a 'spring clean' on your web site. Over time changes to content may occur, new content being added, old content being removed etc. Things to check for:
- Remove/delete old documents and pages that are no longer being used.
- Remove/delete images that are no longer needed
All this old content, even though not being used, is still taking up resources like disk space on your site. If you remove these you will free of resources as well as have less to move.
Step 2 - Do you have a back-up of your site?
Once you have removed the old content and images from your web site make a fresh backup on your computer and burn it to a CD-ROM for safe keeping! Whether you are moving your web site or not having an up to date backup of your web site is important to have! The following are important to have on hand:
- A current back-up of your web site
- All the FTP and control panel passwords needed to access your site
- A current list of the email addresses currently setup on your domain along with their passwords
- Login information for any databases that your web site might be using
Step 3 - Login Information to Manage your Domain Name
When you registered your domain name you would have received an email containing login information that allows you to login to a control panel with the company that you registered your domain name with. This control panel allows you to keep your domains record of ownership up to date, such as:
- Contact Email Address
- Contact Mailing Address
- Your Domain Names current name server address
Moving your web site is an excellent chance to update your contact information. It is very important to make certain the contact information is current on your domains record (Also called a WHOIS record) especially the contact email address. This will be the address where renewal notices will be sent when it comes time for your domain to be renewed. If these emails are sent to an out of date email address then you will not know your domain is coming up for renewal and it may disappear from the web!
Step 4 - Setup the new Web Hosting Package with Fifth Gear Hosting
Now that you have got an up to date backup of your web site and have all the passwords for your login accounts, its time to setup your new web hosting account with Fifth Gear Hosting. Once you have setup your new web hosting account you will receive an email with your login information. You will use this login information to upload your web site to your new web hosting account.
The email will also contain the login information needed to access your plesk control panel. It is here where you will be able to create email addresses and manage various aspects of your web hosting account with Fifth Gear Hosting.
Step 5 - The Big Move!
You have your web site audited and backed up, your passwords for your FTP accounts and email address, now its time to move your site! Use the following as a check list:
- Upload your web sites content to your account at Fifth Gear Hosting and login to the control panel to test your site to make certain all files were moved successfully
- Create your email addresses with the passwords you normally use to check your email
Once you are satisfied that all of your web sites content has been moved and your email accounts setup. The last step is to login to your domain name control panel and change the name servers that your domain name points to. Name servers are like the phone books of the internet, your web site address is listed in this directory along with a corresponding number that computers use to find view your site when someone enters your domain name into their web browser.
What you need to do is login and change the name servers to point to your web sites new web hosting account at Fifth Gear Hosting. The name servers addresses will be included in the email you receive when you setup your new web hosting account. Once you have made these changes it takes approximately 24-48 hours for the "change of address" to occur all across the internet.
During this time period people visiting your web site may view your website from either your old web hosting provider or your new one at Fifth Gear Hosting depending on whether the name servers used by people has been updated with the new information. It is important to make certain to NOT cancel your web hosting package with your old web hosting provider until enough time has passed to ensure all traffic to your site is being directed to your new web hosting provider.
If you have any questions regarding this process please feel free to contact us and will can provide assistance in moving your site.
