How to transfer your site without having downtime - FTP/cPanel Focused

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holhostcom

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Switch your web hosting without having your web site go down

1. Sign up for any web hosting package before cancelling your old web hosting account.

2. Download your entire old web site using a FTP program, or using cPanel backup utility. Then upload your entire web site to your new web hosting account by FTP or using cPanel backup utility again. If you are using FTP, you will need to re-chmod your folders if you are running scripts.

3. After you have moved all your files to your new account, you need to change your domain name's name servers. Make sure everything is working by using a temporary address at your new hopefully great web host before you update your nameservers. Then go to where you registered your domain name or email them directly. Update your name servers to the NEW name servers your new host emailed you when you signed up.

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4. After 24-72 hours your domain will be fully propegated and pointing to your new web hosting home.

5. You can now cancel your old web hosting and your web site should be fully up and running on your new account.

And that's it, after those 5 steps, your site is fully up and running with no downtime experienced at all. In all cases it's great to backup, cPanel has a great tool to allow it.
 
Thanks for sharing this tutorial, Its a well known way to transfer your site without any downtime.
 
Thanks for sharing the info. I would like to add additional step here. Before you update the DNS setting, it is always great that you download all the previous emails to your terminal for future reference - (if you are webmail user). For your information, it is not all the hosting providers provide the email migration.
 
Works great if your website doesn't have any dynamic content, but if it's a forum, for example, you'll end up with some posts left on the old server that will mysteriously disappear, so not exactly seamless.

The best way is if you can set up your own nameservers and point those to the new server, but it's complicated.

Alternatively, set the old site up as a proxy to the new location. Again, complicated. (And sometimes not allowed. Check with your hosting before you get banned.)

Then there's always the maintenance page, with a countdown, that you put on the old location, so your visitors at least know when to come back.
 
Thats useful information, downtime is most important concern when you are running SEM or SEO for your website and unavailability can cause significant money loss for your business.
 
Yeah, that's the procedure. I recently migrated from older to newer server within my existing hosting company account but the procedure was the same. I agree that for dynamical content you need to put in a little more effort.
 
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