Moving Hosts

Changing, The Way to Better Health

Stress is a major cause of general illness. Usually it means a lifestyle change is in order. We can not help with that, but what we can do is provide to you Internet Services without the added hassle of downtime, no support and the other potholes you may find some Web Hosts include in the cost.

We have put together a little helpful "white paper" to help alleviate any concerns you may have.

Before you take the step to change over hosts, from your old one to us, you will need to find out a few things from your old host:

Do they allow you to transfer the Domain Name(s) you wish to use?

This means transferring 100% away from them and allowing someone else to take care of administrating the Domain Names billing and DNS options.

If they do not allow you to transfer, firstly why not (Maybe their records show you owe an invoice), secondly inquire about a "Name Server change".

Name Servers hold information on where your Domain Name points to. Every Domain Name will have at least two Name Servers. When changing hosts you will almost certainly need to use the new hosts Name Servers. Unless you administer your own DNS, experts only also note Name Server changes often take between 24 and 72 hours.

Once you have established your ability to use your desired Domain Name(s), you need to think about the process of uploading your web site to the new server. This should not be difficult. You will probably have used an FTP client in the past, this guide will not expand on using an FTP client.

One option available involves using the transfer tool of certain control panels. One such example is cPanels transfer tool. When it works, it means we can initiate a transfer of your web site if you tell us the sites IP, username and password. In theory it will also transfer MySQL databases, e-mail accounts, SSL certs and pretty much everything on your old hosts account. cPanel can also transfer from Ensim.

If however this option is not available to you, do not worry. You will simply need to download your web site via FTP if you do not possess a local copy of the data. If you have access to the web based tool PHPMyAdmin, or something similar, you will be able to backup your MySQL databases ready to restore them on your new account.

One quick comment back to FTP. You may find your new account uses a different directory structure than your old one. But the norm is to upload any content you want publicly viewable to: www, public_html or htdocs. You may need to ask us if you do not know the correct folder to upload too.

Another common caveat comes from different usernames. Specifically MySQL database connection details. On your new account it is likely your username will be different from your old. If it is different, be sure to change the username, password and perhaps MySQL database name(s) if they are also different, in the file you specify the details for your site and / or forum database connection details. If the details are different, it does not mean you can’t import the database. It doesn’t matter what the name of the database(s) are.

Now also do not forget to re-add any e-mail accounts you need. You may need to re-configure your desired e-mail client to receive and send e-mail on our service. For example on our servers, the e-mail username is the full e-mail address and the server for both POP3 and SMTP will be: mail.yourdomain.com. To send via SMTP, you will need to set your e-mail client to authorise with our SMTP server.

If by reading this you are further confused, or still need assistance with moving over to us, we are more than happy to help you transfer your site(s) over to us.