Web Hosting - Painless Web Hosting Provider Transfer

Perhaps your business is growing faster than your web hosting company can keep up with or maybe your chosen site just isn't up to par with your sites' needs.

In any case, the best solution to this conundrum is to switch web hosting companies. Before you dive blindly into what can be a sea of confusion, there are a few steps you should take to ensure the transition from one site provider to another is seamless and worry-free.

As with any type of renovation project, embarking on a web hosting company change will go much easier if you develop a plan and then stick to it.

In order to ensure a smooth and efficient transfer from one web hosting company to another, you should allow yourself enough time to complete each step and then run tests for accuracy and accessibility.

Generally this type of transition requires at least three to four weeks from the initial planning stage to the date your new site is up and running.

Once you have completed your research and determined which site you will do business with (bear in mind there are hundreds of thousands of sites you can form an alliance with, so this can sometimes be a daunting and often frustrating task.

However, doing your homework at this stage can eliminate a lot of aggravation later.), you can have your new site activated usually within 24-48 hours.

The first, and most important, step at this stage is to ensure you do a secure and complete backup of all the files on your current (old) web hosting provider's site regardless of whether or not you have the files stored on a local computer.

Backups are like insurance, you never appreciate having them until a catastrophe strikes, so even though it may be tempting to eliminate this step, you may live to regret it should the proverbial "Murphy, what can go wrong will go wrong " be lurking in cyberspace to sabotage your efforts.

Besides backing up the customary HTML files, it is a good idea to have copies of script, database and server log files. Creating a directory structure that mirrors the one on your web server makes downloading files easier and the transition a lot more efficient.

Following confirmation from your new web hosting company that your account has been activated and your file transfer protocol procedures are operational, you are ready to upload your files to the new server.

Since you have already saved your files in a familiar directory structure, uploading your information to the new site should progress without a hitch.

Following completion of the above steps, you can now run some tests on the new web site in order to verify that all modules are working perfectly.

Once everything is working flawlessly, you are ready to change your old Domain Name Server (DNS) to the new one which would have been provided by the new web hosting company.

All that's left now is for you to sit back and wait for the hits to begin.