how to move to a new webhosting company

Thank you for visiting WebMasterKnowHow.com - If you can suggest things that should be added to the site I would like to hear about them. Anything regarding hosting, HTML, attracting traffic, problems and mistakes. I intend to make this site as useful as I can, and with that in mind I'm trying to add at least one new topic every week.

Your website - How to move to a new hosting company

If you are unhappy with your present hosting company, or you just think you can do better with a different hosting company, you may be afraid it will be hard to move your site to a new host.

It can be very difficult if you are not prepared in advance, but if you do what you need to do ahead of time, it is amazingly easy to move your site to a new host. I have done it many times, and I have learned my lessons well. You may learn from my experience.

What you need to do in advance:

Have a complete and current copy of your website on your own computer. And just in case, make another copy on floppies, or a CD, or a different computer that is in a different building. You may want to update the offsite copy weekly, or monthly, but if you need it, it should be good enough to use.
Have your doman name registered with a different company from the one that hosts your site, and have the ability to easily change your "nameserver information" yourself, without needing someone else to do it for you. If you are having a conflict with your hosting company you don't want them to be able to hold your domain hostage. Most doman registering companies give you the ability to change your own information. The one I use, Dotster.com makes it easy for me.

Select your new hosting company and order hosting service from them. I have some suggested companies.
Your new host will give you your new nameserver information. This will probably be something like:
- ns1.yournewhostingcompany.com
- ns2.yournewhostingcompany.com
They will also send you a temporary URL to use to copy your website to its new home. Copy your entire site onto the new server. You now have your site in 2 places.
As soon as you have put the copy on your new host's server you can go to the company that registered your domain name, and change the nameserver information to what your new host gave you.

After you change the nameserver information it will take a day or two for the information to propogate to all of the internet. During that time some visitors will go to your old site and some to the new one. After a few days they will all come to your new site and you can notify your old hosting company that you are no longer using their service.