Move a Website From One Host to Another

April 1, 2015 | Written by Tony

We’ve had a number of clients, over the years, ask us to move their website from one host to another. There was even one recently that had us do this between two internal servers they had (within their own network) – and we took care of that.

Moving a website from one host to another is a fairly simple process if you know how to do it. If you’re not sure how to do it, it can seem like a big, scary task. There are several ways to do it and things can go wrong if it’s not done right. One thing that could go wrong, for instance, is that the new server (host) has a different environment and some parts of the website don’t work, all of a sudden… that happens.

The General Procedure for Moving a Website

Here’s the typical process for moving a website – a WordPress website, for example:

1. Get two zip files from the current host: a zip file (with permissions preserved) of all the website files and a zip file that’s a database dump file (with SQL commands).
2. Prepare the new website space and upload the zip files to the hosting space.
3. Unzip the website files and check permissions.
4. Set up the new database (database name, username, password and permissions).
5. Import the database.
6. Check the configuration file and make sure the database and other settings are correct.
7. Test the website on the new hosting – preferably by changing the “hosts” file on our computer so that the domain resolves correctly on our computers (for the best testing possible).
8. Test all forms and functionality on the website.
9. Confirm that email from forms was received and any test orders (e-commerce) have been received and have gone through the payment gateway into a checking account.

We then write a report and deliver it.

Within any of these steps, like I mentioned, there could be problems. When that happens, we have to do troubleshooting, figure out what the problem is and then fix it.

Conclusion

If you need your website moved from one server to another, contact us. We’ve done this a lot and our Website Maintenance Team will be happy to answer your questions.

-Tony