There are a lot of steps involved in moving a web-site, and a lot of different places you can get tripped up, sometimes resulting in your website becoming unavailable for hours or even days. Today we had a client asking about moving a web-site to our hosting service, so I wrote up this list of steps.

• Configure the DNS server use a TTL of 15 minutes.
  This is an option in the DNS settings.
• If your current provider is also hosting DNS:
  • Set up the current DNS settings on the new DNS server.
  • Modify the name servers listed in the domain registration to list the new servers.
  • Wait the zone TTL length for remote name servers to update.
  • Notify the old DNS provider that you have moved DNS away from them.
• Set up the new hosting account.
• Publish the pages to the new account.
• Test that the pages look good there.
• Change the DNS server to list the new hosting server IP address.
• Test the new website until you are happy with it.
• If you have problems with the new server, consider switching DNS back.
• Configure the DNS server use a TTL of 2 to 4 hours.

comments powered by Disqus