There are many reasons you may want to change your web hosting company. Maybe your outgoing web host has too much downtime, or they don't care about your business, or maybe they place banners all over your site. Or maybe you just like that you can support the environment while you host your website with Dreamscape Multimedia. Whatever the case, moving your website isn't hard. If you're an incoming customer, Dreamscape Multimedia will work with your soon-to-be-ex web hosting company to complete the whole transfer process for you. This means we'll need to get your username and password for your current hosting account. Then, we'll take the following steps to ensure a flawless transition with zero downtime for your website or your customers. If you're web savvy, you can also do this yourself. Here's how:
- Download everything from your current host, including making a backup of any databases (if applicable.)
- Upload everything to your new site. Dreamscape Multimedia allows you to upload via the IP address before you change your DNS. If you don't want downtime, this is what you do before closing your old web hosting account and before you change your DNS settings to reflect your new location.
- Optional: After you re-establish your databases, you need to change the files that point to it. In many PHP scripts, this is all held in a configuration file, often called "config.php". (If you had a simple site that wasn't using any databases, no need to worry about this step.)
- Once everything is uploaded to your new Dreamscape Multimedia web hosting account and tested for integrity, it is time to change your DNS settings. This is done through whatever company you used to host your domain name (yourdomainname.com, etc.) This may be through the same company that was hosting your website, but often it is a separate company. Again, we can do this for you, as we include this in the process of transferring your domain to our own service.
Using the username and password for your domain hosting service, we will point your DNS server settings away from their current settings to: ns1.dreamscapemultimedia.com (primary) and ns2.dreamscapemultimedia.com (secondary).
While this may take effect almost immediately in some cases, this can sometimes take up to three days to take effect, sometimes seeming to switch on and off the new hosting, before finally settling there for good. This is why it is a good idea to keep the old hosting account live for a few days after making the switch. We usually feel the most comfortable after the domain has been moved to our service, as we then are able to manage it fully.
[Tip: If you're unsure how to check to see if you've redirected your domain name successfully, try changing a word or a color somewhere on your homepage and then upload the changed page to your new account. When you view your site in your browser, do you see the change? Remember to refresh the page to make sure. If you don't see your change, you're still seeing the old account. Call us (517.394.3000) or email if you run into problems.]
[Advanced users: You can also use the ping command to verify you're hitting the new IP address.]
- Test everything on your site one last time.
- Congratulations! Cancel your old hosting; you are officially hosting with Dreamscape Multimedia!
