A Guide To Moving Webhosts

Here's a handy checklist for you to keep by your computer when moving web hosts so the move will go without a hitch

If you've hosted your websites on the internet for any amount of time, you'll know that a web host never lasts forever. It's likely that you have a host you've had for years now and they've served you well, by maybe you've outgrown then and your original plans you needed the hosting for and need to move on to a host that offers the things you need now. Sometimes good hosts have problems that are beyond their control. Whatever your reason for switching web hosts, here are some things that can be easily overlooked in the process.

Backups You can never have too many backups. First thing you do before anything else is to create a full backup of your website. This can be easily done using your web host's control panel.

Emails Make sure your email accounts are created over at the new host before you change the name servers. Don't forget email forwards. In the busyness of moving files and getting the website working, things like email accounts and forwarding tend to be forgotten especially if they are accounts you don't use often.

Service Overlap Don't wait till the last minute to move. Make sure there is some overlap in service between the old and new hosting account, preferably a week or more. Sometimes an ISP hasn't updated or refreshed yet and will continue sending traffic and email to your old site. You want to be able to log in to the old host to check for those straggler emails.

Databases This is rather unlikely especially when your website is powered by a database. The more likely scenario would be you didn't upgrade the script to reflect the changes. Moving databases is something you can do by yourself fairly easily but if you are uncomfortable then get someone else to do it.

Page Redirects Make sure your htaccess and cPanel redirects are re-setup properly. Often, people overlook the htaccess altogether because it may have been hidden from them or the new web host already has an htaccess file created. But just by having an htaccess file doesn't mean your redirects will work automatically because chances are, the one at the new web host is just an empty file. If you have any 301 redirects, you need to open up the htaccess file from your old web host, copy and paste it to the new web host.

Paths Different web hosts have different server setups. If you're moving a cPanel web host to another cPanel web host, this isn't usually an issue. It will be much more work though if you are moving from one hosting system to another or one control panel to another. If you're running scripts, check to make sure your scripts are referencing the correct paths. If you're changing the domain of your website as well, check your images and links too.

Files Outside Your Public_html Folder These files are easy to forget because they are not public. Sometimes people store files in there 'for later', be sure to check it and make sure you didn't forget you have some backups, drafts or something like that stored there.

Forms Seems obvious and easy to spot but not all scripts are in the forefront and forms are one of those. Maybe you haven't installed the form script on the new server or they have a different form mailer. Check that all your forms are working especially the contact forms.

As your site gets bigger, it will become more and more likely that you'll miss things in the move. Get a screen shot of the file manager in your control panel to see if you're missing anything and take an inventory of all the scripts that are running on your site. It's a good rule to keep this inventory up to date so that you won't have to scramble next time you need this information. Good luck.

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