Technology7 min read
A site moves to new hosting without going dark if things happen in the right order: first the groundwork is laid, then it's copied, then it's checked in its new home — and only at the very end is the address switched over. Most moves that “took the site down” got the order wrong, not the technology.
The day before
This part isn't visible, which is why it gets skipped. Yet it's exactly what decides whether the move takes half an hour or there's a night without email.
The domain registrar, wherever the DNS zone lives, the old hosting, the new hosting and the site's admin. If one of the five is missing on moving day, the work stops at the worst possible moment.
Email can be with the hosting, with a separate service, or with Google or Microsoft. That decides whether it moves at all — and it's the only item on the list that affects people who have nothing to do with the site.
Every DNS record tells the world how long to remember it. If that time is a full day, a change takes a full day to reach everyone. Lowered to a few minutes a day in advance, the switch goes through almost instantly.
The files and the database, downloaded to your side — not just sitting on the old server. A backup kept in the place you're leaving isn't a backup.
Forms, payments, emails sent by the site, scheduled tasks, connections to other systems. The list is what you later use to check that nothing has broken.
When the site has the fewest visitors — for most sites that's at night or on Sunday morning. For a shop, look at when the fewest orders come in.
The move
The logic of the order is simple: until the address is switched, visitors see the old site and risk nothing. That's why everything is checked before the switch.
To the new place, with all settings. Watch the PHP and database versions — if the new server runs a newer version, an old site may work with errors that only show up on a specific action.
Your computer can be pointed at the new server while the rest of the world still sees the old one — with one line in the hosts file. That way you check the real site at the real address without anyone noticing.
Forms, payment, logging in to the admin, search, emails sent by the site. Everything from the day-before list — one by one.
The certificate for the secure connection is issued for the domain, and the new server can usually only request it after the switch. Make sure it will happen automatically, so the site doesn't open with a warning.
Changing the records in the DNS zone to point to the new server. If the time to live was lowered a day earlier, most visitors move to the new place within minutes.
From a phone on mobile data, not from the office. That way you see what someone sees who has never been on the old server.
Note
The site opens, everything looks fine — and that's exactly why these five things are discovered a week later, by an unhappy customer.
The first week
The move is over when, a week later, nothing has complained — not when the site opened for the first time.
Questions
If your question isn't here, call us — we answer by phone too.
+359 882 95 89 89Not necessarily. If everything is copied and checked in the new place before the address is switched, visitors see the old site until the last moment and then the new one — with no gap.
The exception is a shop where orders keep coming in during the copy. Then a quiet hour is chosen, or orders are paused for a few minutes so that none gets lost.
If the page URLs stay the same — you shouldn't. Google tracks the URLs, not the server they live on.
The risk comes when the URLs, the domain or the platform change along with the hosting. Then you need page-by-page redirects — described in redesign without losing rankings.
No. The domain and the hosting are two different services, even when you pay for them in one place. The domain stays yours and simply starts pointing to the new server.
It is important, though, that the domain is registered in your name and that you have access to it. If it's in the previous contractor's name, that's the first thing to fix.
It depends on where it lives. If it's with Google or Microsoft, it doesn't move at all — you just make sure its records don't get changed along with the site.
If it's with the old hosting, the mailboxes are created in the new place, their contents are transferred, and only then are the email records changed. This is the part that most often gets rushed.
After about a week, when neither visitors nor emails are arriving at the old server any more. The address change reaches the whole internet gradually, not all at once.
Before that, download one last full backup from it — if something turns out to be missing a month later, there'll be somewhere to get it from.
A small site without email at the hosting — yes, if the hosting offers a migration tool and you follow the order above.
A shop, a site with email at the hosting or a site with scheduled tasks is a different job. There the risk lies in the things that stop silently — and they're only discovered when someone complains.
Related services
It's rarely just one thing. Here are the services that go with this one, and why.
Next step
Tell us where it is now and where you want it to go. We'll tell you what moves, what doesn't and how long it takes — before anything is touched.
