How To: Changing Providers with No Down Time

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FatalSw1tch

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PLease remove this line if you sticky this.

Introduction:
Many people ask how to change their webhosting provider without having down time. It is very simple and anyone can do this. It will be layed out in steps.

Step One:
Research a new hosting provider. You want to make sure that the new hosting provider can offer you what ever your old host couldn't. This is usually the reason why you are leaving them in the first place.

Step Two:
Get all of your domain information ahead of time. Some hosts may register your domain for you. You will simply need to reqest in most cases to gain control of the domain. Otherwise your host should change it for you.

Step Three:
Purches your new services from the host you wish to change to.

Step Four:
Back your content. If you have a static site this will be very easy for you. If you have a dynamic site like this forum for example it will be more difficult. Make sure to have all content and information you need.

Step Five:
Upload your content to your new service providers servers.

Step Six:
Update your domains DNS information to point to your new providers servers.

Step Seven:
About 48 Hours later your site should be pointing to the new server. At this point you could notify your old provider that you no longer wish to host with them anymore.

Step Eight:
Enjoy your new services :cool:

Best Regards,
 
Not if you have a static site, because domain names propogate at diffrent times acrossed the states. Because ISP's re cache at diffrent times. You would have the site on both servers, thus you wouldn't have down time. Unless it is a forum or extremely dynamic page then it is really diffrent.
 
Changing DNS servers does not create downtime as pointed out already. I usually recommend giving it more time before canceling the old account. I have seen DNS changes to go through using up to 96 hours - depending on the ISP.

One additional step would also be, to access the old account via IP to check for last minute emails.

And one more - email the old host from a domain that was not hosted with him/her before. Their local DNS might not realize, that the domain has moved.

Christoph
 
Thanks for posting this Loren :)
If its a dynamic site, then changing DNS will most likely cause downtime as you will have to close down one of the sites to move to the other, you cant have both running at the same time like you can with static sites when changing DNS.

I would also recommend 4-5 days before canceling the old account as I have known DNS changes to take that long for some people because their ISP doesnt update the cache often or at the right time
Im sure this will help some people :)

there is also another way to do this which really causes no downtime but I think it requires root access to edit the DNS and I dont know how to do it
 
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