Hostway Bylined Articles

Title

Changing Hosting Platform (Q&A)

Publication

Author

“I'm looking for information on the best ways of moving a web site from one system to another. This could mean changing scripting language, object models, applications, database links, file systems, URLs, etc. What are the best practices involved?”

1) Make a realistic estimate of the amount of downtime you are prepared to accept for your site.

A seamless move is always going to be more complicated and expensive than one involving scheduled downtime. We’ll assume for the purposes of this list of points that you’re going for a smooth transition.

2) Identify any external resources that your web site currently relies on.

These typically include databases and mail servers but may also include COM objects or other scripting resources that your hosting company has made available to you. Make a checklist of these resources.

3) Identify any points at which your web site needs to interact with the file system of the web server that hosts it.

You need to concentrate on the use of physical paths and the permissions that your web site requires to carry out file operations. Make a checklist of the points at which this interaction occurs.

4) If any changes in DNS are going to be necessary - which will be the case if the IP number of your website needs to change – make sure that you are able to make changes to DNS or get them made for you.

It’s also a good idea to make sure that the ttl values (Time To Live) are dropped a couple of days before those changes need to be made.

5) Plan the move including development and testing time.

It’s a real advantage to you if you can have both websites live simultaneously, no amount of testing will guarantee that your site will run perfectly in a new environment, especially if that new environment is remote and managed by a third party. You can make use of local DNS management to fool your web browser into going to the new website before DNS is updated and in this way you can realistically test the website in its new home before the final update of the DNS.

6) Plan for success, prepare for failure. Have a fall back strategy.

This may be a holding page that you’ve prepared or you may want to have a mail shot ready to go out to your customers in case of the migration taking longer than you planned.

7) Talk to your hosting company.

If you don’t host the site yourself, and chances are that you don’t, then communicate your expectations to your hosting company. Try to work with the same individual in the planning and execution of the move and make sure that this individual is available during your planned migration time. Be prepared to take their advice, they know their systems better than you do.

8) Sweeten the medicine, if you’re moving platforms it’s probably because you want to add functionality to your website or improve its performance.

Try to have something cool for your customers ready immediately after the move. That way, if things to go wrong, you’ve got something worthwhile to show for the hassle you’re inflicting on your visitors.

_________________________________________