How To Switch Webhosts Without Any Down Time

How To Switch Webhosts Without Any Down Time

Switching to a new host can be a very smooth process or it can be very complicated.

Following our steps will ensure that your move is a painless one.

The first step is to find the new host you want to be with and join them. Make sure not to cancel with your old hosting provider, and do not tell them you will be canceling. For the time being you switching a new web host needs to be kept a secret from them, or they could terminate your site early and cause you some downtime.

At this point you should have two hosting accounts with two hosting providers the old one and the new one. You will now need to download your entire site from the old host. This can be done by connecting to their FTP and download all your files to your harddrive. If you don’t know to transfer files by using FTP, you can download How to FTP, which shows how easy it is to do.

Then connect to the new host’s FTP and upload all of the files that you had just downloaded from your old web host in the previous step.. If you choose: A1-WebsiteHosting.com to make us your new host we will transfer your entire site over free of charge! If you have any cgi or php scripts to move you may need to have someone else to install them if we are not able to.

After you have all your files on both hosting accounts you will change your domain’s dns. Your new host should have provided you with their domain name servers (dns) in your welcome email. If they didn't, you should contact them to find out what dns you should use for your domain.

Dns usually looks like this:
ns1.thehostsnames.com
ns2.thehostsnames.com

Once you know what dns to use on your domain you will go to wherever you purchased the domain from to make the changes. If you purchased your domain from your current web host you usually will need to ask them to make the dns changes for you. Do NOT ask them to change it until after you have uploaded all of your files to your new web host by using the IP your new host has given you. You can tell them this.... "Hello my domain with you is ____ my username is ___ and my password _____ please change my domain dns to ns1.thednsyoureceived.com and ns2.thednsyoureceived.com

If you have any questions we would be more then happy to help you, or even make the dns changes for you.

Once your dns changes have been made it may take up to 48 hours before your site will load off the new host. During this time period your dns is propagating world wide, and your site will be bouncing from the old host to the new host every other minute randomly.

48 hours should have passed now since you have updated your dns. If it has, you can now contact your host you were moving from and cancel your account with them.

If you completed all the above steps you have successfully switched hosts, with no downtime at all!

Webmaster

A1-WebsiteHosting.com

This article is written by Neil Adams for the courtesy of the customers of http://A1-WebsiteHosting.com. You may reproduce this article as long as you make no changes to it, and include this resource file.