How to Migrate Your Website Without Any Downtime

How to Migrate Your Website Without Any Downtime


There are many reasons you would want to migrate your website to another provider. Your current web host might not be offering you all of the services that you need, or you might be paying more than you should. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of ways you can prepare for the big move without affecting the website experience of your users and clients.

If you aren’t completely familiar with the process, let us explain.

What is Website Hosting Migration?

A website hosting migration is a process where all the current web pages on your website get redirected to new web pages with an entirely new hosting without affecting your ranks or changing your website’s layout. 

The ideal migration occurs when the website is completely transferred to a new host without any noticeable change. 

Website migration can be stressful, especially if you cannot afford to be offline for a certain period. The biggest delay is usually getting your website’s DNS registration migrated over to your new provider, which can take a while, depending on when you begin the process. We’ll cover this in greater detail, but timing is worth keeping in mind.

With this article, we will show you how to migrate a website to a new domain. You can use our step-by-step guide as a basis for manual data migration and then build your plan around it. Not all steps may apply to you, so use what you need and leave out the rest.

What is Website Downtime?

Combined with the need to transfer website files, restore important databases, and get every software installation and subdomain configuration in working order, it can take up to a day of inactivity before your site is fully functioning again. This inactivity is called downtime – the time when the website isn’t available for functioning or use.

What Causes Website Downtime?

Sometimes websites have to be updated or migrated to become a better version. The optimal way is to complete the entire migration procedure without website downtime. It is, however, not that easy.  

Many factors cause prolonged website downtime frequently during the migration process. Cyber-attacks, hardware and software issues, and server-side issues are some of the most common examples. Website downtime can also be extended due to DNS issues, DDoS attacks, hardware failures, poor quality of website hosting, and more. If these issues are eliminated beforehand, website downtime can be avoided.

Why Is It Important To Avoid Website Downtime?

People who operate their businesses through websites are greatly invested in the digital economy. And this economy depends on clouds, applications, and different digital platforms. The playing field is extremely large, and new competitors are entering the digital economy every day, making it even more critical for businesses to work harder to retain clients.

In such an environment, optimizing websites to perform better has become crucial. And website downtime is not optimal for your business. High-scale organizations usually suffer from significant reputational and financial loss when downtime occurs due to technical problems or natural disasters.

Therefore, it has become extremely important to eliminate downtime or minimize its impact. 

Coming to that, there are some pretty great tricks to avoid disaster when transferring a website to a new host server.

At the end of the day, if the average customer is completely unaware of any changes being made behind the scenes, then the mission is a success! So let’s take a look at how to migrate your website smoothly.

How to Migrate a Website to a New Domain

As long as the site’s administrator has a general understanding of cPanel, IP addresses, and more advanced FTP login routines that will enable them to work on a new web hosting plan configuration before DNS is altered and transferred to the new host, these tips are relatively easy to implement. Follow these steps to learn how to migrate a website from one server to another.

1. Move First, Cancel Later

Do not cancel an existing web hosting plan before the web migration is complete.

The most common mistake made by website administrators new to web hosting (or transferring their websites between servers) is immediately contacting their old host to inform them of their decision to move their services to a new company’s servers.

While it’s certainly a good idea to inform your old web host in a timely manner about future changes, doing so before the transition has been expertly executed can result in not just downtime but a complete loss of files and database information from the moment a cancellation is requested.

If you want to migrate yoru site, keep reading

Hold That Call

Wondering how long a website migration takes? Web hosting companies generally cancel the customer’s plan almost immediately—as in, as soon as the call has ended—without waiting for the expiry of the current month’s service or subscription fee. Companies consider this as having the consumer’s best interest at heart, as they receive an immediate and prorated refund of any remaining costs.

However, it means that the company will virtually trash every shred of information that has been uploaded to the server during the customer’s time with them. There will be no opportunity, in many cases, to retrieve these files, and move them to the new web hosting company’s server or shared hosting plan in time.

This type of downtime is extremely hard to recover from. It potentially means losing all content and subscriber data and commercial losses, and customer payment details for some websites.

What To Do

Once a new hosting plan has been secured, transfer all files before cancelling the existing hosting plan held by the old company. It might be a good idea to allow the website to run on the new company’s servers for a few days to ensure that nothing has been overlooked during the move.

Once everything has been verified as properly transitioned, only then should the old hosting plan be cancelled.

The first thing to migrate your website is to download your backup files

2. Download Backup Files

Login to cPanel and obtain compressed backups of website files and database information.

For pure ease of use, customers moving to a new web host should ensure that both the new and old hosting companies employ the same web-based administration technology. Typically, this will be a choice between cPanel and the slightly less-popular PleskPanel website control panel.

Aligning the technology employed by both hosts is the easiest way to ensure that data can be quickly backed up and restored in just as quickly a fashion. For the cPanel control panel option, which is virtually the standard in web hosting, customers should navigate to their domain with the 2082 port number attached.

As a reference, it looks like this in a web browser’s address bar: https://my-site.com:2082. Alternatively, https://my-site.com/cpanel may work for some websites.

Locate the Backup Page

After successfully logging into the cPanel interface, locate a group of settings and control panel pages labelled “Backup.” This contains tools to back up the site’s main “public_html” folder and any subdomains. Additionally, the tools here will assist web hosting customers in the backup of their MySQL databases for restoration to the new server.

Find the “Download Backups” option within this grouping, and click on the relevant cPanel administration page.

Download your backups to migrate your site
Image credit: Visualmodo

Downloading Backups

On this page, cPanel will break down the available backups by type. If a full-site backup is available, you should download that file to be later uploaded to a different host. There will also be backup files specific to every subdomain within the website. These are generally optional since the full website backup will contain all of that information, but you can also download these as a precaution.

Customers can secure a compressed backup of every MySQL database individually in a separate area on the same backup downloads page. Each database should be downloaded in its compressed format, and these will be uploaded to the new server to create matching database names later. You should know how to do this anyway. The step is a part of the manual backup process – something you should go through on a regular basis in order to minimize downtime in case of an emergency.

Do Not Decompress!

During this process, do not decompress any of the downloaded backup files. This is because this process will be completed by the new server when the customer uploads the file.

For Mac OS X users, ensure that Safari does not automatically open so-called “safe” file extensions after download. Doing so will ensure that the file remains uncompressed and ready for quick restoration. When all the compressed backup files are secured, log out of the old host cPanel installation and head over to the new host’s version of the website administration software.

3. Making the Transfer

Begin uploading the compressed backup files to the new server.

Virtually every web hosting company will, after receiving the first month’s fee, send an email to the customer containing information like the domain name servers and IP address details for the new hosting plan. This IP address can be used to view the website’s content before DNS propagation and to access the individual FTP account and cPanel administration interface before changes are made.

Logging in

Find the email sent by the hosting company and look for the relevant IP address. If a cPanel link has not been specifically included, assume that either “/cpanel” or the “:2082” port suffix can be added to that IP address to enable an administrative login.

Upon logging in to the new server’s cPanel iteration, locate the backup tools mentioned in Step 2, then navigate to the Backup Downloads page. On the page, find the file-upload box associated with the full-site backup. This will often be labelled as a “Backup Restore” feature. Select the full-site backup file downloaded from the old web hosting company to begin uploading.

After the file is completely uploaded, the webpage will refresh, and file-specific details will be displayed on a line-by-line basis as each file is moved into place. When this second page stops loading, the process will be complete. 

Locate the browser’s “back” button to return to the previous page, and begin the database restoration process in the same fashion. When all of the information is transferred, it’s time to adjust some settings and start the seamless transition process behind the scenes.

Do not cancel yoru existing web hosting plan before the website move is complete

4. Ensure the Database Is Working

One thing to note is that the database backup files do not contain information about usernames, passwords, and permissions associated with each MySQL database. This information will need to be entered into the MySQL database interface within the cPanel.

Prefix Matter

In addition, you should note the prefix assigned to each database within the cPanel. If there are discrepancies (e.g. “jsmith_wordpress” vs “jsm_wordpress”), the prefixes will need to be changed in the configuration file of each software application that connects to that database.

All Relevant Info

Add all relevant users, passwords, and permissions, and then make any necessary edits to system files by logging into the FTP account via the website’s IP address. This will ensure the smooth operation of the software once the domain name has been transferred to show the new host’s files instead of those located at the old company. Once that is done, everything is in place and ready to function perfectly.

All that needs to be changed now is the information that tells the domain which of the two hosting accounts’ files to display to the end-user.

5. Switching Nameservers

Tell the domain registrar to use new domain name servers.

The final step is to simply tell the domain name to show files and data on a different server than the one currently in use. This is done by logging into the domain registration control panel provided by the domain registrar.

In  this control panel, a heading or sidebar item named “Domain Name Servers” should show up, and the current information placed into that area should look like this:

1

2

NS1.OLD-WEBHOST.COM

NS2.OLD-WEBHOST.COM

These need to be replaced with the new name servers for the new host. If you cannot find this information, navigate to the host’s support section, browse their documentation, or get in touch with a representative who can provide the server details.

Changes to DNS records will take effect within 12 to 24 hours in most cases, although sometimes it can take as little as six hours. During this time, both the new and old websites will function properly, and customers will see identical content no matter which hosting files are presented.

To complete your website migration, wait for nameserver propagation
Image credit: Big Commerce

Wait for Nameserver Propagation

host files have become active. While downtime won’t be an issue, website owners should refrain from making any changes to a site’s design, files, or content, until they’re 100% sure that the process is complete and that they’re accessing the new host server.

When this happens, transferring a website to a new web hosting provider is officially complete, and users will have survived the transition without experiencing any downtime whatsoever.

How Long Does a Site Migration Take?

How long would it take for a site to migrate depends on many factors that aren’t affected by hosting? Depending on different aspects of web migration, timing is different in each case. Below are some of the factors that affect the site migration time. 

Amount of data

It’s a given: the more data there is to copy during the migration process, the more it will take for the site to migrate.

Server mess

The time of site web migration completion is also affected by how messy and crowded the server is. There can only be one page at the start – suddenly, there could be a forum, three versions of WordPress, etc. If you determine the exact things you want to migrate before the process, you can save a lot of time.

No access 

Often people don’t remember or don’t know the access to the current server. In such cases, it can take a significant amount of time to obtain data.

Server speed & internet connection

Slow server speed and poor internet connections can make it unnecessarily long for the data to be copied.

Outdated software 

If the website you would be migrating the data from hasn’t been updated for decades, it might not work with the latest and innovative software after the migration is done, which will only increase the time to rectify the errors.

Common sense dictates that you shouldn’t leave the solutions to potential problems to the last minute. Web migration is a complicated process that may take a lot of time and should be planned accordingly. Getting info codes to transfer the domain can also take time. The more we plan about the whole site migration process, the faster it will be.

Tying It All Up 

Make sure to test the website and check that all features are working correctly so you can cancel the old hosting plan. And that’s all there is to it! 

Have you ever migrated your website to another server? How long did the process take? Let us know!

María is an enthusiast of cinema, literature and digital communication. As Content Coordinator at HostPapa, she focuses on the publication of content for the blog and social networks, organizing the translations, as well as writing and editing articles for the KB.

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