How to switch to a new host

In general, if someone wishes to switch to another website hosting provider in the UK, we may assume that the person has a good reason for this. Maybe the customer is dissatisfied with support, or the website is suffering from downtimes, or there's a need for specific features that the web host is unable to provide. These are just a few examples of reasons why anyone would like to change his or her web host.

While many think a switch is a complicated process, it's actually rather easy to do:

1) Start by NOT cancelling your old account. If you start by cancelling it your site will be offline while you don't even know how long it will take before your site can successfully use a new account.

2) Choose either a Windows or a Linux web hosting provider. Your choice will depend on what technologies you are using for your website. We prefer Linux hosting but you can't do much with that if you're using Microsoft technologies such as ASP for your sites.

3) Download all your files to your computer and preferably also to another external drive such as USB. Now you should have a complete backup of your site. Do the same with your data bases.

4) Open a new web site hosting account.

5) Upload all your files and data bases to this new account. You can use FTP for this.

6) Setup new email addresses and try to give them the same name as with your old web hosting account.

7) Change your DNS settings if necessary. Some web hosts such as ours do this automatically. With most web hosts it will take anywhere between 24 - 48 hours before the DNS changes take effect. This means that, in the meantime, your site is still being hosted by your old provider. Don't ask us how they do it, but with our host the DNS changes take effect instantly. The technical name for this is "propagating". So to explain this better: our web host not only provides instant account activation after payment online, but also instantly and automatically configures the DNS settings for you. This means that a few minutes after opening a new account, you can already be online.

8) Cancel your old web hosting account and ask for a refund if you are entitled to this.

That's all there is to it. Easy huh?

Author: Dick Detering.

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. Dicks homepage can be found on this website.