Moving a website to another web host is a scary thing!!!

Okay, you have built your website and you have had a falling out with your web host.  You have thoughts of changing web host but you are frozen with fear that the move will not go well.  Scary thing indeed no matter what the experts say.

You could pay someone big bucks to take care of this move.  For me, having limited resources forced me to take the scary road.  I leapt knowing that the end result could have been total failure.  Here are the steps I took.

  1. Backed up my website and put the backup on my computer.  If something goes wrong, I hoped I could recover.
  2. I found a good replacement web host with an excellent reputation.  I want to make sure that I minimize repeating  this down the road.
  3. Talk (chat) with the web host and I asked a lot of questions.  What impressed me was the tech on the other end was totally professional through the question phase.
  4. I picked the right package for me.
  5. Post purchase experience in chronological order.
    1. I had to change the “Name Servers” for my domains from the old web host to the new web host.  This change took some time to propagate through the network.  Periodically  checked “WhoIs.com” to see whether the change had taken affect.
    2. I then checked whether the “SSL Certificates” (offered as free as part of the package) were active.  These certificates are important to me.  See my earlier blog.
    3. I forward my website email to “Microsoft Windows Live”.  This occurred with the only change required was changing the “Incoming (POP3) Server” and “Outgoing (SMTP) Server” to the new web host portal.
    4. One thing that bothered me was that my domains were not showing up on the new web host “My Domains”.  The domains “ownership” were still on the old web host.  I got an education.
    5. Also another frustrating point is parked domains or aliases.  They try to explain it as best they can but in the end it is still very confusing.
    6. I wished to have the old web host totally divorced from me.  Here are the steps required:
      1. I had to unlock “Register Lock” for each domain on the old web host.
      2. I had to produce an “EPP Code” for each domain on the old web host.
      3. I had to send the domain name and “EPP Code” for each domain.  They offered domain migration.  It cost me a few bucks.

This whole process took 2 days to accomplish.  In the end, it went well (sort of).

My major problem was that I could not get past this fear that all of the valuable time I spent on my website would be lost.  It took total frustration from my old web host to force me to make this decision.

It is my hope that this offers someone help if they have to confront this issue.  Good luck.