Why moving hosting worries people
There are plenty of good reasons to move your website to a new host. Your current one might be slow, expensive at renewal time, or hard to get hold of when something goes wrong. But many business owners put it off because they have heard stories of sites vanishing or emails going missing for days.
Those stories are real, but they are nearly always caused by rushing. A move that is planned properly is usually uneventful. Here is how to approach it.
Step 1: Make a full backup first
Before anything is touched, take a complete backup of your website. That means both the files, which include the design and images, and the database, which holds your page content and form entries.
Keep a copy somewhere away from your current host, such as your own computer or cloud storage. If anything goes wrong during the move, this is your safety net.
If you have email stored with your current host, back that up too. Old messages from customers and suppliers can be surprisingly important.
Step 2: Understand your domain and DNS
This is the part that sounds technical, so here is the simple version.
Your domain is your web address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk. You register it with a company called a registrar. That might be the same company as your host, or a different one.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is like a set of signposts attached to your domain. When someone types your web address, the signposts tell their browser which server to go to. Different signposts point to different things:
- One type points visitors to your website
- Another type, called MX records, tells the world where to deliver your email
- Others are used to prove your email is genuine and to connect services like Google tools
Moving hosting mostly means changing the website signposts so they point to the new server. The rest should stay as they are unless there is a good reason to change them.
Before you start, make sure you can log in to wherever your domain is registered, and write down or screenshot every DNS record currently in place.
Step 3: Do not forget email records
This is the most common way a hosting move goes wrong. If your email is provided by your old host and you cancel it, your mailboxes can disappear. If someone replaces all your DNS records at once and leaves out the MX records, new emails can stop arriving.
Before the move, find out:
- Where your email is actually hosted
- Whether it will stay there or needs to move as well
- Which DNS records need to stay exactly as they are
If the email does need to move, plan that as its own step, with old messages copied across first.
Step 4: Set up and test before switching
A good move happens in two stages. First, the site is copied to the new host and checked, while the old site carries on working as normal. Only once everything has been tested do the signposts get switched.
Things worth checking on the new copy include:
- Every page loads and looks right on a phone and a computer
- Images, logos and downloads all appear
- Contact and booking forms actually send messages to the right inbox
- The SSL certificate is working, so visitors see the padlock and no "Not secure" warning
- Links between pages go where they should
Your web person can usually let you preview the new copy before it goes live. Take the time to click around it properly.
Step 5: Pick a sensible time
When the DNS signposts are changed, it can take a little while for the change to reach everyone. Some visitors may see the new site straight away while others still see the old one for a few hours, and occasionally longer.
Because of this, avoid switching right before your busiest period. For a salon, that might mean not switching on a Friday afternoon. For a landscaper, maybe not at the start of spring. A quiet weekday morning gives you the rest of the day to spot anything odd and get it fixed.
Avoid making the switch just before you go on holiday too. You want to be around to check things.
Step 6: Keep the old hosting until everything is checked
This is the simplest piece of advice and the one most often ignored. Do not cancel your old hosting the moment the new site is live.
Keep it running for at least a few weeks. During that time:
- Check the site regularly from different devices
- Send test emails to and from your business address
- Make sure new enquiries from your forms are arriving
- Confirm your new backups are running
If something turns out to be missing, the old copy is still there to fetch it from. Once you are confident everything is working, and you have a final backup saved, then cancel the old account.
Getting help with the move
If this sounds like more than you want to deal with, that is completely understandable. When We are Graft builds a website, the hosting, SSL certificate and backups are all part of the monthly plan, and you can see how we work on our process page. The site, domain, content and data belong to you, so you are never locked in once the 12-month minimum is up.
Thinking about a move
If you are unhappy with your current host and want to talk it through, send us a message through our contact page or ask for a free design to see what a fresh start could look like. You see the design before you pay, and if you do not like it, you pay nothing.