How do I move my site from my old host to your servers? Print

If you want to transfer your hosting to us then the best course of action is to get in touch. We can help you identify the best hosting package for you and manage the move. Best just to get in touch and ask.

The main issues to do with account migration is the movement of your files, your databases and email account details. The process should result in little or no down time. For e-commerce sites there tends to be a greater risk of downtime as you don't want to miss any orders.

The information you must ensure you have before you start are:

1. Ensure you have access and control over your domain, your most valuable asset.
2. Make sure you have access to your current hosting account
3. Purchase your hosting package from us
4. If transferring it yourself have a FTP client

How to move your Hosting

1. If you have cPanel Hosting

If you have cPanel hosting it is very easy. Just provide your cPanel account access details and we can move your whole account for you. We/You will then need to change which server your domain is pointing at. For this we can either change the A Record IP address on the DNS zone for your domain or its Nameservers to ours. If the Nameservers are changed it does me that there can be some disruption to your visitor traffic for upto 48hrs. In reality it is a lot less than this and the disruption reduces over time. The advantage of changing the nameservers is that you can then manage your DNS from your iDigLocal cPanel hosting portal.

2. If you don't have cpanel or wish to do it manually

1. Firstly check the settings of your old hosting. Identify what PHP version you are currently using and any custom settings. Take a note of your emails you have set up and any forwarders and also databases.
2. Access your new cPanel Hosting account, you can do this from your client area. Then in the cPanel portal make sure you have the correct PHP version selected and set up any email accounts, forwarders etc.
3. Set up any databases that you need using the cPanel Database Wizard and make a note of the names of the database, database user and database user password. Your website will more than likely using a Databases as most websites use a content management system like Wordpress. (optionally) If you use a high traffic, database driven site, it is wise to setup remote access to the database on your old web hosting server during the DNS propagation process. This ensures that your database stays in sync and up to date all on one server.
4. Download your files from the old using an FTP client and then upload them to your new site with FTP.
5. Now we want to transfer the database from the Old server to the new. If the databases are not going to be synched and your site is very active with changes to the data in the database, e.g. an e-commerce site you may want to put your website in maintenance mode. This maybe a better idea if you are changing nameservers as the potential disruption may last longer. The Database import can be done via the phpMyAdmin module in cPanel.
   
6. Test the site using the IP address. One way to do this is to set up a temporary entry into your PC's Host File using the IP address of your new server.
7. Once you are happy with it put the old site in maintenance mode then change either your A record to the IP of the new Server or the nameserver. So login to your domain registrars management portal and change the nameservers. Typically these will be: ns1.idighosting.com, ns2.idighosting.com, ns3.idighosting.com, ns4.idighosting.com. Propogation can take sometime, especially for the nameserver change but it gets less very quickly. Essentially sometimes visitors are taken to the old server and some time the new. If the old server website is in maintenance mode they cannot purchase anything on the new server which will maintain data integrity.
8. You can check the progress of your DNS propogation with tools like whatsmydns. Or just keep refreshing your browser.
   
   
   Following the above steps will prevent any downtime for your site and allow you to ensure that neither emails nor database updates are lost in the transfer process. But as we said at the beginning, the best course of action is just to get in touch and talk to us about it.