| If you have had a problem with your current hosting | | | | will end up spending hours upon hours transferring your |
| company or if your company just doesn't provide the | | | | sites from one company to another. |
| features that you're looking in a hosting account then | | | | Using an FTP program to upload your site and your |
| you might have decided to move from one company | | | | databases: |
| to another so in theory all you need to do is to migrate | | | | Once you have your site zipped as well is your |
| the data from your old server to the new server | | | | databases it is time to use the very same FTP |
| however, in most cases this is easier said than done. | | | | program that you used to download the data to |
| Let's describe all of the steps required to migrate your | | | | upload it to your new server, again getting hold of your |
| data from one company to another. | | | | tech-support team is extremely important if you do not |
| Getting a hold of the support team in both companies: | | | | know how to decompress your sites and databases |
| This step is critical if you're not a very knowledgeable | | | | into the new machine. Once you have decompressed |
| webmaster, if you don't know how to zip and unzip the | | | | everything it is now time to match your databases to |
| fate of which is hosted in your old company then doing | | | | your scripts and sites, the step also involves changing |
| the migration will prove to be extremely difficult or | | | | the paths to your scripts if they have been hardcoded. |
| nearly impossible. If the main reason that you are | | | | You will notice that this is basically the hardest step in |
| moving your data from the old company is that you | | | | the migration process, you will also need to modify |
| had terrible support then it would be an intelligent move | | | | your "hosts file" in your computer in order to set the |
| to higher a knowledgeable webmaster who will be | | | | then new IP address of your sites in order to test |
| able to compress and decompress all of the data | | | | them and make sure they are working before you |
| necessary. | | | | decide to change the DNS records, changing "hosts |
| Zipping your websites and your databases: | | | | file" will also help you reduce the amount of downtime |
| Before compressing your data you need to make | | | | your sites will experience during migration. |
| sure that your databases have a name which will | | | | Changing the DNS records: |
| allow you to identify them in order to match them with | | | | In a nutshell, the DNS records are two lines of |
| the corresponding website, if they do not have very | | | | information which point towards the web server that |
| descriptive names then you might want to go into the | | | | you're using, when you decide to move from one |
| settings of your scripts in order to see which side is | | | | company to another the DNS records will be pointing |
| using which database. | | | | to the old company's server, by changing the DNS |
| Zipping or compressing your data should be the first | | | | records you will basically shift the arrow towards your |
| thing that you do when you move from one company | | | | new server. Once you set new DNS information it will |
| to another, you can compress your websites in two | | | | take some time to propagate across the web so don't |
| different formats you can use a .zip file or you can | | | | expect your sites to be immediately available, DNS |
| use a .zip.tar extension which will basically allow you to | | | | propagation usually takes between 15 minutes all the |
| do the very same thing. Compressing your information | | | | way to 72 hours so be patient. |
| allows for a faster data transfer from one place to | | | | If you have followed all of the steps described above |
| another, this is a step they do not want to neglect or | | | | and everything works fine there is nothing else to say |
| skip because if you did not compress your data you | | | | but congratulations! |