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For whatever reason, the time has come to change your website host (see also Beginner's guide to Web Site Hosting. There are some things that you can do to make the transition easier for both you and invisible to your site visitors.

1) Get your own domain name

If you don't have your own domain name, then the first move is going to be more complicated. You'll have to:

tell your customers about your new email address and new Web site address ahead of time
keep the old accounts active for some period of time while people find out about the change
setup email forwarding, home page forwarding and maybe forwarding for frequently visited Web site pages.

If you do have your own domain name, you don't really have to tell your customers anything about your move, because all the addresses they use to reach you stay the same. (Think of it like having a Post Office box address. Your place of business can move anywhere it wants, but your customers always send their mail to the same place.)

2) Try the service before you move your domain

The single biggest mistake I made was switching my domain as soon as I signed up with a new website hosting company. (see also Top 10 Tips Before Choosing a Web Site Host)This caused me a lot of grief when I found that my new webhost was "not as advertised" and I had to switch back to my previous webhost as soon as possible! It takes time to make the change (see also Switching web Site Hosts. What takes so long?), so you really want to make sure that your new webhost provides good service before you start the process.

So when you sign up with a new website hosting, tell them you'll move your domain yourself. After your new website host account is active you should do the following things:

You'll be able to do this by using the new IP address that has been assigned to you. The webhost should provide instructions for doing this.Once the site is uploaded, check out everything on your Web site. You'll have to access the site by typing the IP address (http://XXX.XX.XX.XX/) into the browser, since typing your domain will take you to your old webhost's site.Make sure that all links work. If you're using CGI programs or Front Page extensions (or "Webbots"), make sure they work. If your webhost has webserver log analysis software, check that out too. But for that you'll probably need to autoforward visitors to your new site (see below)

This can be the hardest to do, since you can't send email to an IP address. But you can setup your email client to check mail from the new webhost's mailserver and verify that the POP login works ok. (Your email program should be able to check multiple POP mailboxes, since email will be going to both mailboxes during the nameserver transition period.)

3) Forward users from your old site.

To check any webserver log analysis software, you need some site traffic! You can do this by changing your old site's home page (and also other frequently accessed pages) so that it contains:

a "We've moved" message
a link to the new page (in case autoforwarding doesn't work)
and a META refresh tag that forwards the user automatically.

Here's an example of the HTML code that you'll need to include between the <head> and </head> tags at the top of your page (before the <body> section.</p>

This should all be on one line. The number of seconds that the page will display before forwarding the user is set in the number immediately following content= .

The URL of the page you want the user to be forwarded to is set after URL= .

Make sure everything after content= is inside quotes (" ").

Be sure you don't change the names of the pages that you change to autoforward! If you do, users won't be able to find your old pages, and won't get forwarded to your new pages!

4) Discontinue your old website hosting service last!

So you've done everything above, and your site has been running for at least a few days without problems. Great! Now you can move your domain.

After you've confirmed that the domain has transferred, and you've waited 2 to 3 days after you see the nameserver change, the last step is to contact your old webhost and discontinue service.

Before you contact them, make sure you've cleaned out your mailbox(es) if you keep mail on the server, and downloaded any files that you didn't have on your computer.

Then delete everything in your old site, so that you don't have to worry about any files being left around when the webhost rents your former IP address on their server.

Ask them when service will stop and what the final charges will be.

Congratulations! You've successfully changed webhosts!

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