I'm currently on shared hosting and am looking into dedicated (see other thread) for the future. Just wondering how much hassel it is to move hosts. I know I will need to transfer my databases, change script paths, transfer domains/subdomains, and so on.

As far as I can see due to the way I have set everything up at the moment it should be fairly easy. Is there anything thats likely to be easier said then done? or is it normally fairly straightfoward? What sort of downtime would I be looking at while pointing the domain to the new server?

TIA
Simon

If you hang on to the shared hosting while you get the dedicated server, you can make a seamless transfer without your website having any downtime. Some hosts offer to help you transfer your website for you as well.

Well if you have cPanel, you can login to the new server and just transfer the account..

No downtime, you can change the A Record to point right away to the new server - then change the nameservers

Originally Posted by ORiN

If you hang on to the shared hosting while you get the dedicated server, you can make a seamless transfer without your website having any downtime. Some hosts offer to help you transfer your website for you as well.

agreed - you can upload content to the new dedicated box and then repoint DNS so that transfer is seamless. Might prove problematic if you have a database but you can always lower the TTL on the domain the night before migration to repropogate much quicker AIUI. I'm not an expert on these things mind!

Thanks for all your help. I don't currently have CPanel but should have it on the new server though. A seamless transfer or as little downtime as possible is what I am after. The database is located on a different server so I will be able to leave everything pointing to that for the time being if need be.

Simon

Expect the unexpected. Expect that things will go wrong and you will have downtime.

First, you need to get your website over to the new site.

Do you have root access? Can you get to the command prompt? If yes then all you have to do is to tarzip the whole site into one file and leave it in your public_html directory.

On your new server you need to change to the public_html directory and then 'wget' the file. This transfers the tarzip from old host to new host over the internet so to speak. This means that you don't have to spend ages on your PC uploading....

Next you want to ensure that all the paths to your scripts, databases etc. are updated.

On your old server you may have had a directory structure such as /home/www/recedo but your new hoster may use something like /home/recedo/public_html

Any php scripts you have will need to be updated to reflect the change in the home directory.

As for DNS changes you could expect downtime of a day or two. This is usually out of your control when the change is made. Some of your site visitors will be able to find the new server OK pretty soon, some may take a while - depends on the ISP.

Something to look out for is the old hosters dragging their feet and not being bothered with you moving. You're an ex-customer of theirs and as a shared hoster you probably weren't paying them much anyway! There are some horror stories out there of ex-hosters delaying things and wanting faxes signed in triplicate etc. You may be fine but always expect that things will not go smoothly.

Wow, thanks for that post very interesting. I will take it all into account. I was expecting something like 24-48 hours downtime anyway. I would have liked to move to a new server before the site launched but due to financial implications this will not be happening!

I like the idea of tarzipping the site, unfortunatly I don't have root access and cannot get to the command promt on the current hosting (as far as I know although I will look into it). That would make things easier.

All of my PHP scripts etc are easy enough to change through config files and so on.

I was also expecting the old host to 'drag their feet' a little. I have already spoken to them and they don't seem to mind too much about me moving (they tried to get me to use their dedicated servers but the support is just not there, they couldn't even answer some sales related questions a while back) but you never know.

Oh and one other thing, would I be able to view the site on the new server via the IP number so I can test it before moving the domain name across?

Thanks again
Simon

You can still use wget to grab the complete website accross the wire sort of thing. You don't need to tarzip first but it is quicker.

I forget the switches but on your new server you should be able to

wget http://www.myoldsite.co.uk/ -someswitch

and this will grab everything in your public_html and below.

If you had directories outside of public_html (such as password protection scripts, mailing list scripts, log files etc.) then these will not be transfered over.

You could also use rysnc to grab those extra dir's but that's getting a bit tricky now.

You will be able to use your new server via the IP address but try and hold off from giving your customers this information, and don't post it on your hoempage or message board.

I did this once. I notified on the homepage that 'if the site is unavaible try XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX'. Whilst that did work for basic page reading it did not go to well for the php and perl scripts I was using - I had to hard code the mysite.co.uk to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX and then change it back when the DNS stuff was complete.

Not only that but search engines picked up the IP address. I have a big problem now with search engines indexing some pages on the site twice. Not worried about duplication penalties but I am concerned that when I move hosts in a few weeks I'll have a new IP address and thus any visitors clicking the search engine results pages with IP address in it will not find the new server.

Thanks again for some useful info. Since then I have found out that I can request SSH access on my current server.

As for using the IP, it would be for internal testing only and not to be given to the public. But, looking at what you said, there will be a lot of places where scripts use a url variable that would need to be changed, perhaps not such a good idea!

As my database is hosted on a different server I will be able to link to it as soon as the domain is pointing to the correct place and transfer the data to the new server when needed. This will mean no data loss which would be good.

It's not going to be for a few weeks now but I'd like to get my head round what I'll be doing so it'll be as smooth as possible!

Simon