How to transfer a Website to a New Web Host

The main reasons that most people make the decision to change web hosts are excessive downtime, bad support and over charges for excessive bandwidth usage.

Transferring a website to a new web host can be a confusing process.

Under some circumstances transfer is impossible and the only option will be to rebuild your website on the new host's server and then change the DNS info where you registered your domain name to point to the new location.

An example of this situation would be if you used an online website builder provided by your old web host to build your site and your new web host doesn't use the same software.

Even if your new web host uses the same online software, in most cases it would be almost impossible to get the 2 hosts to work together to transfer your site. Rebuilding would be the most logical solution.

If you've used a third party tool and built the website on your PC, transferring will be much simpler.

If the site is still active, upload all files (pages, images, etc.) to your new web space. Set it up exactly as it was on the old server. You can usually test the site using a secondary, temporary URL provided by the new host.

The uploading process can be greatly simplified using a third party FTP tool like CuteFTP. If you've taken the time to build the site exactly the same on your PC as it was on your old web host server, you can upload the entire site with one click on a folder or directory.

Note: If the site contains CGI scripts be sure to reset permissions on the new server

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Once the site is tested in the new location, go back to the place where you registered your domain name and change the DNS information to point to the new servers. New DNS (Domain Name Server) information will be provided by your new web host.

In most cases it is not necessary to transfer your domain name to your new web host. We discourage the practice because it can cause your site to be out of service if the transfer doesn't go smoothly.

Some of the really good web hosts will transfer your website for you. When inquiring about a new service, ask if this is an option.

The people at Yahoo Web Hosting specialize in transferring websites built with third party tools to their service. Offering services like this may be the reason they currently host over 30 million websites and blogs. Click Here

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