Changing Hosting Companies? How To Move Your Blog Without Any Downtime
Posted in Anatomy of a Blog, Hosting, How To, WebMaster on May 4th, 2008 by DB
I spent some time yesterday moving one of my blogs (no, not this one) over to another Web Hosting company. I figured this would be a good topic to talk about on Web Hosting Plans and tips as I’m sure some of you might be contemplating the same thing and not sure how to go about changing web hosting companies.
Changing hosting companies could be for a variety of reasons. Either the hosting company is not good enough or the hosting setup is just not right for your blog or you are realigning your portfolio. Don’t ask me yet what I mean by that last one, I will tell you guys one day. Whatever your reason, if you are looking to change your blog hosting provider then simply follow the steps listed below and you should be good to go.
Did I mention having no downtime is important? I guess I did not, to me that is implicit. After all downtime means lost business, lost credibility and more importantly lost rankings. Yes, downtime can and will affect your SERP’s. This is why it is critical to select the right hosting company, one that is known for its consistency and support. Of late I have started to compile and list select hosting plans from various companies on here. Look at the recommended hosting section and the others if you are shopping for hosting.
Back to moving your blog. Follow these steps in the order listed below. I’m assuming that you are hosted on Linux and have Cpanel as your control panel.
- First would be to take a backup of the existing blog. Let’s start with all the files. I use FileZilla as my ftpclient and find it really good. Its free and reliable and really simple to use. Download the client version and connect to your current blog hosting provider. Download the entire contents of your “public_html” folder onto your local machine. Yes, the entire “public_html” folder including the themes, plugins and the admin files.
- Next is the database backup. You need the latest and greatest version of your database. If you are using the database plugin from Il Filosofo then you should already have a database backup file created on a regular basis. I always set the frequency to daily and set it up to be sent to my email. You can get the plugin from here ( http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ ) if you don’t have it already and want to use it going forward.Generating the latest backup directly from your CPanel / phpMyAdmin is a straightforward process. Log on to your hosting account, select “MySql Databases” and launch “phpMyAdmin”. The link to launch “phpMyAdmin” is all the way down at the bottom of the page. Select all the options as shown below and export your database backup.
- Now its time to setup your new hosting account. I’m assuming you’ve already done the review and selection process and selected a hosting plan that best suits your needs. One important selection criteria to choose a blog hosting provider would be the option for a one touch install of your favorite blogging platform (WordPress in our case). Many offer this option as part of Fantastico but only a few offer the latest version of WordPress (2.5.1). I’ve always found HostGator to be really quick in updating their hosting setup to accommodate the latest releases from WordPress.You should already have access to your new Hosting Account and CPanel to continue. Launch CPanel and click on Fantastico and create a WordPress blog. The database name will never be the same unless you have the same username and it does not matter. Do a quick check to see if your blog is installed correctly by launching your blog from CPanel. Remember you have not yet changed your DNS and so you cannot use your domain name yet.
- Now that you have the shell of your WordPress blog installed its time to import your backup. Lets start with the database. Go back to your new hosting account CPanel and launch “phpMyAdmin”. You will see that you have one database in there which is your blog database.Select the import option on “phpMyAdmin”. Select your database backup file and click on the “Go” button. If you’ve done everything correctly so far then the database should be imported without any errors.
- Next its the turn of the files. Use FileZilla and connect to your new hosting account. Navigate to the public_html folder and upload the entire contents from the backup you took earlier in step 1 EXCEPT for the wp-config.php file. The “wp-config.php” is found directly in the “public_html” folder and take care to avoid overwriting this file. This file has your new database and login details and must be left alone. Overwrite every other file from your backup. Set the overwrite option to yes so that all existing files are overwritten.This should not take more than a few minutes depending on your internet connection. Once you are done uploading the files you are 95% done. Yes, that’s all there is to it. The only step left to do is to change your domain nameserver information. Before you do that launch your website from CPanel and check if your blog is exactly the way it should be.
- Finally when you are finished double checking your new blog, simply log on to your domain registrar control panel and change your name server information to point to your new hosting account. I debated to include a screenshot for this but then decided against it as there are too many domain registrars out there and most have detailed steps on how to change your website’s nameserver information.Once you’ve changed the nameservers you probably have to wait 24-48 hrs for it to propagate. It usually will be a lot sooner but waiting 48 hrs is best. Ping your domain from your command prompt at frequent intervals and you will see if your domain IP Address has indeed changed.If you run a really popular blog you might want to take another database backup from your old blog and import it back into your new blog to ensure all the latest comments are captured and transferred as well.
That’s all there is to it. Following the above steps should enable you to migrate your blog over to a new hosting company or plan without any downtime and keep all your subscribers happy. Changing your blog’s hosting provider is a big step but not necessarily a complicated one.
Bookmark this page, you never know when you are going to need it. Do come back for more tips on website hosting and don’t forget to subscribe to this feed.
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