Foreign Perspectives

Unfortunately, we’re rapidly becoming experts at this but for those that think they’re locked in to their current hosting service no matter what, think again because you definitely aren’t locked in.

Essentially, it’s fairly simple and has only seven steps:

1. Sign up with a new hosting service. There’s lots (thousands actually) around though, as we’ve found, not all are as reliable as you might think from the reviews.
2. Whilst you’re waiting for your new host to set up the account for you, take the time to begin the process of copying your website from your existing host to your own computer. It’s best to do that even if you’re sure that the copy on your computer is the same as the copy on the host.
3. If you’ve a database driven site, export the database to your own computer. You may need to do this step later if you’re updating the site during the move (eg if you have a blog).
4. Once the new host has given you the login details, copy the site to it’s new location and, if you have them, upload the databases (you’ll probably need to create the databases via the control panel first).
5. At this point you will need to edit the config files of any database applications so that they point to the new location.
6. Change the nameservers to point to your new host.
7. Cancel your old hosting contract. Personally, I’d leave it a few days just to make sure that everything is working.

The big hassle is the time required to download and upload a large site but other than that, it’s pretty painless.