Tutorial: Changing web hosting or domain registrar

My lecturer goes 'Hmm we learn new things everyday" once we realized that multiplying the sum of squares of variance with it's eigen vector will give the eigen values which is was exactly the same if you calculate eigen vectors and eigen values from the variance-covariance matrices. (confusing?...just pretend like you know.)

So to incorporate the 'I learn new things everyday' theme, I'm going to write about changing web hosting service or domain name from one company to the other. There are multitudes of reason for wanting to change, bad service, lot of downtime, you need more space, more bandwith, well anything really. Webhosting company is like restaurant, you can always pick another one when you don't like the previous one.

Mine comes when Mercumaya.net takes ages to answer my question, I was a customer from 2007 and the service just gets steadily worst each year. I don't think anyone ever work at the company any more, so all your question just got dump somewhere and nobody even bother to answer anything. Which is a lousy thing, because as a company that can reach customer on a global scale, this just reeks pure stupidity. It doesn't even has a Paypal account that I can use to directly pay for it's service.

An internet hosting company without an online payment services is an oxymoron.

So when to change? You can change it anytime really, but sometimes you register for a certain period of time so it make sense to change it when your service came to the end period. But please be reminded to change it before it ends because you can only change it during it's active period not after ward. It will get blocked once it ends giving you more trouble when trying to do anything with it.

This guide assumes you are on Cpanel and MySQL database.

Things you'll need to know in order to change:

1. Your login and password of your domain and hosting service, it's a separate account. The domain account will list you domain name, and all it's whois detail and DNS nameservers detail. The hosting panel, is where you control your web files.

2. Back-up of your web file. On Dreamweaver there's a 'Get' button where you can use to download all the files on the servers through FTP. If you use Cpanel, select the files you want, compress and download it.

3. Back-up of your database if you have one, especially for things like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, and all e-commerce driven web. How? easiest is by going to phpMyAdmin and select the database and click export, easiest is in SQL format. It will generate a long text, copy it to your notepad and save as "mydatabase.sql" in your computer or sometimes it download automatically to your computer, it depends on the phpMyAdmin version you got.

Okay lets start with changing domain and hosting altogether.

1. Get a new host, usually it will come with these option:

register new domain
transfer domain name
just get hosting.

option 1, is not what this tutorial is about, so let go for option 2, change host and domain, you need to understand, your domain name is not connected to your hosting, but usually its the hosting company that register your domain name, so in a way its like saying, you pay for a car, but the car ownership registration work is owned by the company who sold you the car, so if you want somebody else to have ownership of the car (domain name registration work), you need to change a few things.

When you buy a new hosting and want to change your domain name ownership to that new company, you need to have a few information handy.

1. EPP code

While choosing to transfer domain name, the company will ask for EPP code, it is a secret 'phrase' you need in order change domain ownership to new company.

Where to get it from? login into your 'domain' login panel > 'my account'(of your old domain account - this usually located at the company website) You will get an option to see you domain, choose that ,select the domain name you want to change and find 'domain secret' or something similar. Click it and it will show you a code, just like a password.

Save that, and when prompted by the new hosting company, give it to them.

And the transfer is done, you'll get an email telling you it's has been completed once all the sales information and payment is done and the company manage to change it.

Ohh..since you are changing host and domain, it is best to use an email account which is not related to your domain name, use Gmail or yahoo or others. Since once your site is being propagate, you email will be unavailable.

Now you can upload all your content to the new host, once you get the temporary control panel login from the new company.

Why temporary? because when you change host, the company will need to change the nameservers DNS and once change, it will takes time to propagate to the whole world. Good thing, your old site is still active, so if people visit 'www.mysite.com' they can still see it if you haven't taken it down. It's good for static content site.

But for business related site, or dynamic database driven site, better put it under maintenance mode so no new addition is added to you database, because you'll already save a copy of the old one. You don't want to have to copy it again and again especially when it involves customer.

Bad thing about this, it takes time and by the time your site is fully propagate, you might loose a few visitors.

What now?

Upload your file and database to you new hosting site. Don't forget to change your configure account inside your Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal account to the new database and password once you set them up.

How to set new database:

Go to Cpanel, create database, create your database and login user and password. Go to phpMyAdmin, select the new database and choose the 'import' tab. Import your .sql file earlier and it's done. All the information from the old database is in your new one.

Can you see it? not yet, it's the bane of changing hosting, you need to wait before you can see your new hosting takes action. You can only see it once it's been propagate, take can takes up to 48 hours.