Transferring your website without any downtime.  
by Aiden O'Neill

Through the development of a web site webmasters may find that their web hosting needs may have changed from the initial time they setup their site. Either through development of more involved sites that require more intensive programming or language support or just simply a site that has grown to large and busy for the current setup. In some cases, a webmaster may find themselves stuck with a web host that they have encountered numerous problems with, whether that be support issues, or billing issues. In summary, some sites need a change in web hosting companies.

Sounds like a simple thing, purchase your hosting, move your files and update your DNS setting with the domain registrar. Stop, if that's what you think, because if you are not careful some of your loyal repeat customers may be surprised to see that your site is not working anymore, which can happen if you don't handle a transfer correctly. As your visitors and customers are what makes your site thrive, you want to make sure you follow a few steps.

1. Find a New Host.

Purchase your hosting with your newly chosen web host. By utilizing web hosting coupons you can not only save money on the cost of the new host but some hosting companies will pay you to transfer from your old host or will credit you the amount of time you still had with your old host.

Lunarpages is well known for their hosting and will add the amount of time you had remaining with your old host to your Lunarpages account for free up to 6 months.

HostICan will pay you up to $40 to transfer from your old host. Both companies offer a coupon to encourage you to make the switch and both companies are suited for webmaster moving their sites with the credits they offer to transfer.

Lunarpages offers $26.00 off plus 1 Free month plus any transfer credit with the Lunar pages coupon code : WHC26OFF.

HostICan offers $30.00 off plus up to $40.00 of transfer credit with the Hostican coupon code: GREATNESS-12.

2. Download Your Files.

Using your FTP file transfer program or whatever method you use, download all your site's files and folders to your computer. Transfer the entire site as you want to keep the directory structure intact.

3. Upload Your Files.

Using the information you received in your welcome email from your new host, upload your files to the new site. Since the site's Domain Name System (DNS) information has not been changed yet, you will have to use the IP address to connect to the site. Your email should have this alternate IP address to connect with, otherwise contact your web host for this address.

4. Setup your Email Accounts.

Now setup all your sites email accounts with your new host. These accounts won't work but you want to have them ready to accept emails the moment your site moves so a user's email to you won't bounce.

To make sure you don't miss any emails when you make changes to your Domain Name Server information, it is suggested you create two email accounts in your email program (ie. Outlook, etc), one for the new site address and one for the old address. Use the IP address for each host and you will ensure to get any email sent from a user who is still getting your old host and from users who are being directed to your new host. If you don't get that much email or aren't worried about missing a few emails, then you can disregard setting up the emails for the old host.

5. Update your Domain Name System information

Using the company that you used to register your domain, login and change the DNS settings to the name servers your new host listed in your welcome email. After you make these changes it can take anywhere from 24-48 hours for the change to propagate through the internet. Until these is complete some users will get your site on your new host's servers and some will still get your site from your old host. After 48 hours it should be safe for you to cancel your old account as all users will now be accessing your new host.

6. Your site has been transferred flawlessly and most likely unnoticed by your users.

If you follow these steps your users will never notice that your site has been moved and you will keep your users happy. It may still be a good idea to post a notice on your site that you are planning a host change and give users a date range that this will occur so in the event your transfer doesn't go smoothly, your users will be aware and will be more understanding of any downtime and more likely to return.

About the Author

XsitePro: The Lazy Man's (or Woman's) Way to Produce Quality Websites  
by Darren A Gibson

How many people would love to have their own website (to promote their business, hobby, club or family homepage), but think it would be too much hassle? After all, you need to know HTML to build a website - don't you?

There are a number of things which can put off a potential webmaster/mistress, most of which relate to the apparent technical nature of web design/publishing. The purpose of this article is to help dismiss those fears and suggest ways to create your own websites without technical know-how.

It is true that, until recently, it was necessary to create web pages in 'raw' html. Not so nowadays. There are now a number of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web page editors that simplify the process. If you are able to create a document using a word processor such as Word, then chances are you will have no problem using a WYSIWYG editor to create your pages. Prices range from zero (yes, you read correctly) for NVU - a fully featured open source program - to several hundred for Macromedia (Adobe) Dreamweaver.

Many of the WYSIWYG programs on the market also incorporate some form of inbuilt publishing capability, meaning they actually put all the files needed to produce your completed website onto the web server. One such program is XsitePro from Intellimon. Initially aimed at internet marketers, XsitePro is equally suited to novice webmasters who want to get a quality site published quickly and easily.

Using the term "lazy" in the title is actually an insult to those intelligent enough to use the most time efficient means to get their work published, so they can focus on the content on their site. Ask yourself this question -would you rather spend several hours building one page (most of which will be spent on the layout and not the content), or less than an hour to produce an entire site? Using XsitePro, it is possible to build a complete site, optimized for search engines with navigation and site maps for both humans and search engine spiders in about 50 minutes.

Once you have selected your initial page layout options, you can literally either type in or copy and paste your content. XsitePro also has a spell check tool, so you can avoid the embarrassment of mis-spelled words on your site. If you do wish to make money from affiliate or advertising programs such as Google Adsense, you can add these with a right click of the mouse.

The sitemaps and navigation are created automatically, which reduces the time required both when creating the site initially and when updating the site (imagine you have a 100 page website and you want to add more pages. With traditional WYSIWYG software, you would need to update the navigation in every page plus the sitemap individually).

From the perspective of someone who would prefer to concentrate his or her efforts on creating quality content, XsitePro is an essential tool. Also, with the built in search engine optimization tools, you can make sure your site gets indexed quickly so that the fruits of your efforts can be seen by as many visitors as possible.

About the Author