How to Move Your Website
by: MattHedges | Total views: 17 | Word Count: 1061 | View PDF | Print View
On Google, any people ask about moving to another web host or IP address without having any sort of glitches. If you have a static website or can spare one day when the site can move between two IP addresses, this would be helpful. However, if you have a dynamic site, the concept will remain the same, but will be slightly more difficult for you. The steps involved in the process are these:
Step 1: Sign up with a good web host provider
It's always wise to make an intensive research or follow some references in order to have a good web host. As far as I am concerned, I selected csoft.net after the research that did exhibit a brilliant readership, whereas, pair.com was the selection of my non-SEO friend. To clarify the fact, we can assume shifting from csoft.net to pair.com and the IP is going to change then from 63.x.x.x to 65.x.x.x. A machine makes use of DNS system (like 61.115.6.132 ) in order to map websites to the IP address.
Step 2: Create a backup of your website on the new web host
Having a static website is good as that would mean that just copying the whole file to the new web host - that is all. Having a blog makes it harder as it usually involves MySQL for storage of posts. Some e-commerce websites are more difficult for this reason as the database is always synced. In this case, you may have to set up a replica of the database between the old and new locations during the switch.
Let us cite an example of a WordPress blog using MySQL database which can deal with being down for two hours without too much trouble. Assume that you have used the FTP or tar for copying the static files from one web host to another. You will then need to make a fresh MySQL database on the new host. Usually you can give the same username and database name. if that is not allowed, you can tweak the WordPress wp-config.php on the new location to update the username, database name, and other relevant matters.
Having the new SQL database, you can copy the old one to the new one and the load the database. This is quite simple.
Keep in mind that you not only have a username and a password for both the web hosts, but different usernames and passwords for the database at every single location. You may also have the MySQL database stored on a unique location, which is the reason I showed the host option while database restoration. Also, if the new host has a unique option for the database, you will be required to edit the wp-config.php file, else WordPress will be unable to access the database on your new host.
You have similar copies of your website at two different locations. If your blog is just updated with a few comments daily, it is not a big deal if a comment is posted or if someone changes your database during a time when the transition is taking place. However, if your site is huge and based on e-commerce, you will need to work hard to keep both databases synchronized.
Step 3: Changing the DNS to point to the new web host
This is the main thing to achieve. Let me give some fair idea on DNS first. Whenever Googlebot or anybody attempts to reach your site, they look your IP address. They do their best make sure of the authenticity by rechecking the IP address after about 500 fetches, or even check whether certain number of hours have elapsed. Normally, people using DNS-enabled browsers are affected by TTL [a setting - Time to Live], which is measured in seconds and says "The IP address you fetched will be safe for 'x' seconds; you can cache this IP address and not bother to look it up again for that many seconds." Obviously, since if you tracked the IP address for all the content on each webpage of your site, the browser would move very slowly indeed.
Sites like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. possess a bit short DNS TTL setting (300-900 seconds) because you intend to have one of them in order to make the data center mechanics perfect for endowing the machines with good data provided you have several data centers. TTL is immensely important as a short TTL lets you drag the IP address of a data center out of the rotary motion very quickly.
It elucidates the days of 'Google Dance'. Staying nearly for a week and based on the data center that the user strikes, it served both the old and new results. Actually, it took many days to move the data to all the centers and having filled it with new data, each data center was overthrown and reinstated. The webmasters used to verify www2.google.com or www3.google.com in this course of time because they directed them to the latest data centers. Now, you can accomplish this entire process at the drop of a hat because of a perfect production system.
Step 4: Wait while the DNS change is propagated through the internet
This is a TTL function and is based on whether you are switching to those name servers which are present in the DNS currently. DNS is hierarchical, and thus it will take some time for the DNS caches to be flushes as the TTL is exceeded. The switch, which takes place at the root of DNS, would be faster only if you use a smart registrar and a known set of the new name servers. The 'dig+trace domain' can be used in UNIX and Linux for confirming that the new name server is present on the root server.
Step 5: If Googlebot is fetching from the new web host and the IP address, the process is almost over and one can shut down the previous website.
You can check your IP address by pinging your domain. The old visitors might be using the old IP address from their own DNS cache, but the new visitors should be getting the new one. Some people have a long TTL set, and they should be allowed two days. After that, you can deactivate hosting on the old location. You can check your logs for a fail-safe confirmation of this. When your log mentions no one visiting from the old location, your work is fully done.
About the Author
About the author: Matt Hedges, 12 year veteran of the web hosting industry, helps small business owners find the best hosting companies on the Internet. Hedges is the head staff writer for WebHostingMadness.com, a web hosting review site.
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