Has anyone transfered a website to another host?

[sussexrob]

Im looking to transfer 5 websites to another host, using the less important one for the trial transfer

One query i have is how do you get a temporary url when you usually need to register a domain with it, unless i have missed something?

Has anyone else moved hosts, found it went well, disaster?

Would be interested to hear

Cheers

Rob

[accelerator]

This would be the procedure I would use:

- Open a new hosting account, and set up the site there as instructed by them, i.e. defining what the url will be and putting the files into the account.

- If you are using a Windows computer, you can then alter the hosts file on your local computer to make just your own computer serve the site url from the IP address of your new hosting account. The hosts file just contains a list of urls against IP addresses, so you just create one for your site with the new IP address of your new hosting (this effectively bypasses the internet DNS system just for your computer).

- You can then test your site under the new hosting on your own computer.

- Once you are happy, remove the local entry from your hosts file, then change the nameservers associated with the url to those of your new hosts. You might want to clear your DNS cache and then test the site live. Ask some friends to do the same.

Hope this helps.

Rgds

Accelerator

[accelerator]

More notes:

Alter hosts file on your local computer and you effectively have your own DNS.

Can check site before live nameservers changed.

Add a line to your 'hosts' file (likely to be
c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) with an entry for the site you
want to check out e.g.

12.12.123.1 yoursitename.co.uk domain name registration web placeholder (www.yoursitename.co.uk).

Rgds

Accelerator

[sussexrob]

Fantastic

Cheers for that. Very very much appreciated

Wil give it a go.. gulp heh

Rob

[sussexrob]

doh!

dawned on me as the sites are wordpress sites, they run on a sql database

does anyone know if its possible to transfere a sql database from one host to another?

Cheers

Rob

[aotagain]

2 things:

Obvious question, but have you checked whether the new host offers temporary domains ? ie. http://mysite.co.uk.sometemporarydomain.com, because that's one way of testing a whole site 'live' before you change the DNS settings.

Secondly, if you're going to try to move a database check whether you have online access through a generic administrator like mylittleadmin on the old and the new host. If you have, you should be able to export/download tables online from the existing one onto your PC/network and then upload to the new one yourself.

If not then see if you can just download the database and then get the new host to upload it. Problem might be if you bought a 'package' which other folks also share, there might not be any way of retrieving your database, as you might not actually have a dedicated one of your own.

If you can access the database with your own code, you could write something to retrieve the data.

Difficult to comment exactly really, I think you need to ask the old and new hosts - it depends very much on them. If they're half decent, they should do a dump for you, but there will be a bit of (possibly unpleasantly tedious) work to upload it to a new host.