The process of transferring your site to a new web hosting company may appear daunting, particularly, when you are afraid of data loss, breakage, or downtimes. However, performed correctly, you can relocate your whole site without seemingly any discontinuity on the end of the user. Whether it is because of better performance, cheaper price, or service, this guide will take you through migrating your website, and you will not experience downtime. Precious key words of the best web hosting services that will enable you know what to seek will also be incorporated.
Why do you need to Migrate your Web site?
Having a variety of reasons to transfer to a new hosting provider is quite common. Perhaps your existing host is not fast enough, does not support the features you need or provides lousy customer service. Or it is possible that you have come across a cheaper offer with a different web hosting platform that you feel would give you a good value of the money you are being charged to host with this company. Regardless of your reason, the target is to ease the process of the transition to be smooth and seamless.
The first step is to select a dependable Web hosting company.
First and foremost, browse on the most appropriate web hosting services which provide:
A large degree of uptime (99.9 percent or more)
Quick server speed
Free Secure Socket Layer certificates and surveillance functions
Simple control panel ( such as cPanel or Plesk )
24 hours customer support
No cost site migration support
Free migrations are often offered by most of the leading web hosting companies, and they have the potential to make the task much easier.
The second step is to backup your website.
Find a complete backup of your site before the migration. This includes:
Every content of the websites (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, picture, etc.)
Databases (such as MySQL in WordPress or some other CMS)
Email and configuration files (in case of necessity)
You may employ such tools as:
The Backup Wizard of cPanel
Such WordPress plug-ins as UpdraftPlus, Duplicator, or All-in-One WP Migration
FTP and phpMyAdmin manual file transfer
The third step is installing your new host environment.
Having selected your new host, open your account and develop the environment requiring to store your site. This can comprise:
Enhancement of a new database
Posting your files under FTP or File Manager
Putting in place your CMS (such as WordPress)
Recovering your back up files and database
This may sometimes be automated should your new web hosting provider have a migration tool or service.
Step 4: Edit Hosts file (to Test)
You can change hosts file of your local computer to access your site at the new host before changing DNS settings. This gives you the chance to look at the migrated version of your site without disturbing real traffic.
Steps:
Find and start the hosts file of your computer
Enter IP address of your new server and your domain name in a new line
Save and clean your internet browser memory
And when you now browse on to your web page, you will now find the one that is uploaded at the new server.
Step 5: Test Everything Completely
Check your whole web site before making the switch official:
Pages are loaded well on all the pages
Forms work
Media files are shown correctly
Admin panels work as per the expectation
Theme and plugins still exist
Test-outs a lot so that there will not be any surprises once you go live.
Step 6: Edit Your DNS Records of Your Domain
When you are feeling secure that everything is good, you need to go to your domain registrar and make the changes necessary to state that the DNS (Domain Name System) points to your new hosting company.
It is common to have DNS changes of the following types:
Refresh of the A record to the new IP of server
Setting your new hosts nameservers as the new nameservers
Depending on your registrar, and global configurations, it can propagate to anywhere between a couple of minutes and up to 48hrs.
Step 7: Overtsee Migration and DNS Propagation
Following the change of the DNS update you can monitor traffic and server logs so as to make sure everything is running well. Useful tools, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, and uptime monitor (UptimeRobot) can be used to identify some problems as soon as they occur.
Bonus Tip: Do not Cancel Your Old Hosting Yet
Make it so that at least a couple days after the migration your old hosting account is not inactive. This is in case there is something wrong or lost files. When you are absolutely confident that the migration has gone well and that the DNS has completed its propagation you are free to cancel your old web host.
Some Mineral Trading Mistakes
Failure to backup your site
Overlooking transfer of your email accounts
Not testing the new arrangement properly
Updating DNS before validating that the new site is working
Cancelling your previous hosting too early
Conclusion
Downtime during migration of your website is a myth provided that you set the plans and the right web hosting provider. The web-hosting services available to us today are generally the best, and they usually come with tools that help with the migration at no extra cost. With a site backup, testing, and a sound refreshing of your DNS, you are assured of a seamless migration without any cause of inconveniences to your users.
The migration process is challenging enough when you know you will be on a faster server and look forward to an upgrade to a VPS or cloud hosting service plan, or the availability of better support, but a well-planned migration can take stress out of the process. Be not in a hurry, read, go through the process and revive your site with a new life it needs.