I’ve recently had to transfer a number of my web sites to new web hosting providers because my traffic continues to go up. It’s a good problem to have but it’s also a pain to deal with. My latest domain move is a real estate blog which currently runs along with 5 other web sites under one account with Bluehost. The time has come to migrate my Real Estate Investing Blog to a new provider and I’ve chosen Host Monster.
So here the steps I had to take to transfer a domain to a brand-new hosting provider. This list serves as they high-level guideline and may vary depending on the current web hosting company and/or blogging, database you are using.
- Select a new web hosting company where you plan on transferring your domain name. I chose Host Monster because I read several good reviews on them.
- Copy your entire site and blog to a local folder so you can easily ftp it to the new web hosting company. If you’ve got a database you also need to export all data into a .sql or .txt file. I had to do this with my WordPress blog data which was actually pretty easy. There’s a plugin to do this otherwise you can just run the built-in export function under “Manage” –> “Export”.
- Setup a new blog with your new web hosting company and then import all previous posts from the export you created in step two above. You’ll also need to FTP your entire website to the new server.
- Now the tricky part is dealing with the domain name transfer. There are two methods to do this. You can either move the entire domain name to your new hosting provider or in my case if you purchased the domain name with a third party like Yahoo, you’ll just need to point that domain to the new name server. This may be confusing for you and your new hosting provider should be able to provide you step-by-step instructions on how to do this. Transferring the domain is relatively easy. But if you only need to point to your domain to a name server, you’ll need to find out the new host name servers which usually begin with something like ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com.
- Until that domain name propagates throughout all name servers on the Internet, your site will probably be in flux for 24 to 48 hours until the propagation is complete. There’s nothing you can do to speed this up it usually depends on how quickly all name servers are updated.
- Assuming your new site should be up and running flawlessly. Now it’s safe to go back and delete any files or folders that you have running on your old Web server sends everything is apparently migrated over successfully.
Bonus tip: How many of you have heard of affiliate programs that offer you cash for referring new clients to a specific product or service? Affiliate marketing and affiliate programs have really taken off in the past several years and companies like host monster are no exception. Are you interested in earning $65 to essentially refer yourself to host monster?
Here’s the scoop. Go and sign up for free affiliate account with either host monster or another web hosting provider that provides an affiliate program and then create one of their affiliate links. You’ll now need to clear your cookies (just to be safe) and then click through the link that you just created. This will take you to host monsters sign up where you can open a new account and essentially put $65 into your own pocket. The net net is $95 ( for one full year of Web hosting) - $65 ( affiliate money you just earned) = $35 for a full year of hosting. Now is that a deal or what?
There’s a plugin to do this otherwise you can just run the built-in export function under “Manage” –> “Export”.
Is that a feature that’s no longer present? None of my WP 2.1.3 blogs have a Manage:Export function.