Step 1: Choose Hosting Plan
The first step is to find the perfect plan for you. If you're just starting out with your website, we recommend our "Web A" Plan, it provides you with lots of great features at the lowest price possible, as your needs grow you can always upgrade your plan from your control panel. If you are an intermediate to advanced user, compare our web hosting plans to determine the features you will need.

Step 2: Find Registrar Info
It is important that you are listed as the owner of your site's domain name. Using a Whois service or your registrars website (if known), you can see who is listed as the administrative contact and who is listed as the technical contact. Make sure you are listed as the Administrative contact. If you are not listed, moving will be very complex and you probably can't do it without the current host or designers permission (legally - you should always be listed as the administrative contact). Your current host is almost always listed as the technical contact, which means they will eventually find out when you try to move your site. We recommend not telling the current host your plans until you have already transferred the site completely. While you look up your site's registrar data, it is a good idea to check when your domain name expires. If you try to move your site near expiration date, it could seriously complicate matters - you could even lose your site. To get around this, you can extend your ownership or transfer registrars before transferring web hosts.

Step 3: Back Up All Data
We can't stress this step enough. When we move sites, not only do we make a copy on our hard drives, but we will burn a CD copy of the site. Some web hosts make backups of your site, but this isn't a safe assumption. There are a few ways to back up your data. One way is to use an ftp program to download all the data. Another is to use software to import or publish your data to your computer. A more tedious way to do it would be to use "file > save as html" in your browser, but you need to make sure you save the file with the right name and download all the images (right click over the image and choose save as), plus you might end up with extra code in your html that you don't want (if you are currently with a free or cheap host, there might be pop up ads or other ads hard coded into your files which you wouldn't want to bring over to your new host). Other data that you might not think of saving is your log files. If you use statistical programs or plan to some day, you will want to keep your log files. If you were running any scripts or had any special folders with password access, you might want to pay close attention to how you set up those folders so you can set the permissions correctly on your new server.

Step 4: Setup New Host
Congratulations, by now you should have received your new Nerdwerx Welcome Email containing your account information and are ready to start setting your account. You should be given an IP address, a login & password, name server information (primary and secondary) and links to your control panel. You will also want to change your password because your initial password for security purposes. Make copies of this information and put it in a safe place. You should be able to connect to your new site right away via your temporary address provided in your welcome email. Try connecting to your site with your ftp program or web editing software and create and upload a temporary index.html (or appropriate variation) page. Then type the temporary address into your browser and make sure your new page shows up. Now you are ready to upload your files. Upload all your files and be sure to use your current directory structure. Don't overwrite or delete any important files your new host provided you with - this may result in contacting technical support to reinstall those files. If you use permissions on any of your folders, be sure to make those changes. CGI scripts go into the cgi-bin directory.

Step 5: Test, Test, and Test
Testing your site before flipping the DNS switch is very important. Customers can't see the new site yet, so now is your chance to work out all the bugs. If your site links use relative paths, you should be able to view the newly uploaded site in your browser. If you use absolute paths, then it will end up clicking over to your new host, so you will either need to switch to relative paths or you can type in the correct page name in order to view it. Check all your pages to see if they mirror what is on your old host. Make sure all the pages exist and the links point to the right places. Carefully test all of your forms and check all of your scripts (many scripts will require editing). Make sure you don't have extra code from your previous host (especially if they were running the advertising on your site) - you will want to remove this code if it exists. We recommend using a link checker after you do all the manual testing. Good link checkers will let you know of possible broken links and should help you fix them. You will want to run your link checker again after switching hosts.

Step 6: Create Your New Email Account(s)
To make sure you don't miss any email messages during the transition, you may want to set up your new email account right away. Whatever you do, make sure you are still able to access your old email account at the same time because you might receive email messages at both accounts for 2-4 days. Set up your email accounts. If you use auto responders, forwarding or aliases, you can set those up in your control panel. If your previous host has a mailing list functionality, you will want to export all the contacts and populate your new mailing list software or site with those contacts before switching sites.

Step 7: Change you DNS Information
Finally we can flip the virtual switch! The key to switching the web hosts is your DNS information. You must be listed as the administrative contact to change hosts. This is why we stressed the importance of being the administrative contact for your site earlier in this article. You will need to update your name server information with your domain registrar as follows:

• ns1.nerdwerxhosting.com (ip: 12.129.101.250)
• ns2.nerdwerxhosting.com (ip: 12.129.101.251)

The key to changing your DNS information is the registrar for your domain name. Some registrars allow changes via simple online forms, others require email confirmation (the registrar usually sends an email to both the technical contact and the administrative contact - either person can confirm the change). Contact your domain registrar to find out how to make the changes, or if they will make the changes for you. The actual switch will usually take 24-72 hours to be recognized by servers across the world. It may take a full week for the smaller more remote servers to recognize the change. This means that someone in Seattle might see the new site a day later, but a customer in London might be looking at the old site at the same time. As mentioned earlier, it is often helpful to make a slight alteration to your homepage on the new site to see when your own servers recognize the new site. During the 1-3 days it takes for the host switch to be complete, it is a good idea to either not make any changes to your site, or to make the changes to both the old host and Nerdwerx Hosting . If you are using a new domain name, you will want to put up a link to the site on your old host and keep the old host account for a couple of months. Setting up an automatic redirection page may seem like a good idea, but it can often hurt your search engine rankings and even get you blacklisted, plus your users might not notice that you have a new domain name. A better method of automatic relocation is to make a .htaccess modification. If the file is available to you, you can use a text editor to alter or add the 404 command. By pointing all 404 errors to your new site you can cause all the traffic to go to your new host as long as you deleting all the files on your old host.

Step 8: Cancel Old Host
Now that you have successfully made the move, it is time to cancel your old account. We recommend keeping your account at least one week after the DNS change. If money is not a factor, then you may want to keep the old site for up to 2 weeks. (some servers around the world will take more than the standard 24-76 hours to propagate).

Step 9: Check Scripts
Once the DNS changes take effect and your site name is now showing your current site, it might be time to check your scripts again. It is possible that your scripts worked on the new host only because they pointed to your old site. If you had to change your scripts temporarily to point at the IP address rather than the site name, this is your chance to change them back.

Step 10: Check Links
It is always a good idea to run a link checker after the move is complete. If you made temporary link changes, including links that point to the IP address or relative links that you would prefer to be absolute links, then you will want to make the appropriate changes. Besides internal links, you may need to check external sites linking in. If you changed your domain name or didn't have one, you will want to notify any site linking to you. The best way to discover these sites is to look are your referrer log files and stats or do a reverse link check in google or alltheweb (these two search engines are considered the most comprehensive). Contact any of these sites to make sure they point to your new site. Unfortunately, some site operators are either lazy or run a stale site, so you can be sure that not all referrers will make the change. Pay close attention to your stats or log files and look for any errors and how they occurred. Your users may also email you if they have any problems with the site. Congratulations! You successfully moved your site to Nerdwerx Hosting. With our reliability and prompt and courteous support, you can now relax and see why the pros choose Nerdwerx Hosting.

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