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Written by Larry Dearing
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Monday, 11 January 2010 19:27 |
Everyone wants a better hosting deal or a more stable web hosting platform. What if you're unhappy with your current web host? Are you afraid to move your website because you cannot afford the downtime often associated with a website move? You can move your site from one host to another with virtually no downtime if you follow these simple steps.
Moving your website with no downtime is really no fancy technical trick, it's really just a matter of timing and understanding how DNS propagates between name servers and how long the process takes. Many of you know this, but many have never really thought it through or are unfamiliar with the wonderful world of DNS.
The steps are very straight forward.
1) Set up your new hosting account and copy site/files and make sure you have everything working at the new location. This is the absolute key to this process. Of course for a static site this is no problem, but sometimes moving database sites are a little more dicey but still very doable. To get your new site to resolve, you may have to access it directly from the IP address your new host gives you, or you may have to make a temporary sub domain A record for the new site, but do make sure your site performs correctly on the new site before moving to the next step.
2) Once your new site is ready, and tested, test it again. Now change your name servers to your new location...... LEAVE THE CURRENT SITE THERE AT THE OLD HOST. The reason is DNS will take anywhere from 2 hours to 72 hours to completely propagate its changes around the internet. That means that during that time some DNS servers that have not updated will send people to your OLD SITE, and those DNS servers that have updated will send people to your NEW SITE. You have NO CONTROL over this. Yes that means you are paying double hosting for that short period. That's the cost of a "no-downtime move". If you are going from free host to free host.... it shouldn't matter!
3) After the 72 hour period is up and you're sure your new site is performing as intended, you can pull down and close your old site.
This is an easy concept that many people don't think through when moving.... resulting in being completely "down" for a day and seemingly up and down for the next three days.
How long should you have the double sites going? Well you must have double sites for at least 72 hours for complete propagation of your DNS records. Now add the time before that to move and test your site. After the propagation period, you may want some "stable" time knowing you can roll back to the old site if necessary. Opinions vary on what that means, but most agree on between two weeks to a month.
As long as you are aware you need to keep the duplicate sites up and functioning for the entire moving and DNS propagation period, you can indeed move your website from one host to another with no downtime. This usually only involves a month of overlapping hosting accounts but with hosting costs so minimal now days, it's certainly worth the small cost. |
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