How do I transfer website from one host to another?

[PH]

Hi, newbie here.

hope i'm posting on the right thread. would just like to ask you guys...

how do you transfer a website from one host to another, completely.
I mean, I just signed up for an acct here @ gator, and i'm moving my clients pages from my old host. How do i do it?

Thanks

[oats]

Assuming you are transferring the existing site domain ...
1. Set up a new account with the name of the domain to be transferred.
2. You can can access that webspace by ftp and upload the site to there (must be into the public_html directory there).
3. You can accesss the site before the domain is transferred by using the URL 'IP address/~username' and test it to make sure it's all working.
3. It is possible that all functions won't work properly on the site (I have had some links not working) using this method, but most will, and you can see that everything is there ok. It should all work properly once the domain transfers.
4. Change the domain's DNS to your new nameserver at Hostgator.
5. Allow 24 - 48 hours for the domain to propagate to the new DNS and off you go.

If you do that all properly the website should not even go off-line. The only thing you might need to be careful with is if the site has a forum or something else that visitors are adding data to regularly. In this case any data entered between the time you download the original site (for uploading to the new space) and the time the site propagates to the new space will have fallen between the two and be lost. If this applies you should maybe think about closing the forum from the time you downloaded it for transfer until the site has propaged in it's new home.

I think that about covers it.

[PH]

hey oats,

thanks for the quick help. though i'm looking for a particular info... is there
a way to transfer all data (website; email addresses, forwarders, and email list; mysql database; etc...) from the previous host to the new one. I was thinking of backup from cpanel. would this do? or is there any other way which might be better, say ftp?

Thanks

[oats]

ahhhh .... good question, but unfortunately I have never done that so I don't know. For the site I did do I just created a new db and set it up using the saved MySQL file from the original site. That worked pretty easy but I didn't have time to experiment with the email addresses so I just set them all up from scratch - about 30 email address and all with forwarders took maybe 30 mins to do. It's straightforward but a bit of a drag.

I'd be interested in hearing from you or anyone else if there is an easy way to mirror a complete existing site tho.

[PH]

hehe

got this from wht, hope this helps...
change reseller hosting provider

going to ask gator support now if they could help me with this.

[PH]

was referred to this page...

http://hostgator.com/backup.html

was not looking around :lol:

[oats]

Sweet - provided you are moving from another cPanel anyway. Thanks for posting that.