How Do I Move A Nonpublished Web Site From One Hosting Company To Another? I Am Doing A Web Site For A Friend
Jan.28, 2010 in
Web Hosting Service
…who initially set his site up under SiteDelux, which is one of the clunkiest do-it-yourself sites I have seen, design-wise. He has registered his domain, but I am in the dark as to how to move it to a “better” hosting/design service. My friend is very unweb-savvy, so I want to just be able to do it for him. Thanks for your help!
January 28th, 2010 at 6:38 am
Well, transferring the DOMAIN is easy. A reputable hosting service will walk you through it step-by-step.
Transferring the actual site is an entirely different monster…
You need the files from the original site. If the original site it is hosted on let him build it himself, he will need to download all of the files from the FTP server on the old host, and upload them to the new host.
Now…
If he built it on a site that does not give him FTP access (such as a free hosting service), he’s up a creek, sans paddle. Time to start from scratch. Good news though: Reputable hosts offer tools for the novice site builder. Bluehost.com is one of the best hosts out there for a low to medium grade website.
January 28th, 2010 at 7:27 am
First off connect to his current web host and FTP down all the files and folders to a local folder on your pc.
After choosing a new web host you will be given instructions to FTP your files up to the new host. You will use your FTP program to copy the files from your local copy to the web server.
Then it is a matter of changing the DNS settings for the domain name from the old to the new settings. These settings are always changed from the Registrar account for the domain name. If you do not know who the registrar is you can do a whois query on the domain name to find out at any of the major registrars like godaddy. Sometimes it is done by clicking like you want to make an offer on the currently registered domain name others it is not.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
You need to be sure that the facilities that are being used by the website on the old host are available on the new one, or equivalent ones that don’t take too much trouble to swap over to.
You need to find out the login for ftp on the old host, and also on the new host.
Then log in with an ftp client and download all the files to a folder on your computer somewhere.
Then login to the new host with the ftp client and upload the files to there.
There are a number of free ftp clients available online, just google “free ftp”
If you are not allowed to use ftp on the old host, all is not lost. I guess there are probably only a very few actual pages on the site, so you can get the code like this:
Open each page in a browser (like Firefox or Internet Explorer), then select View – Source from the bar at the top of the browser. The html code will come up in a notepad window. Just save it to a folder on your computer, giving it the appropriate name (index.html or whatever). If it IS a free host, you will find some extra stuff in the file that puts their ads up, so you need to take that out before uploading it to the new host.
If you haven’t found a host yet, i recommend http://www.okget.info/dh which is pretty cheap and gives you huge amounts of space, masses of free facilities including one click installs, and has friendly helpful staff.
To move the actual domain name, so it’s pointing to the new host, go to the registrar where you bought the domain and find where it says to change name servers. Change the nameservers to the ones given to you in the welcome email from the new host.
Good luck!