Had enough! Time to change hosting company

Hosting
1

(Probably on here somewhere but couldn’t find it)

Et al
I have been with the same hosting company for > 3 years now. Until Christmas 2009 they were good, uptime was wonderful, fast response etc: etc:
But since then problems have begun, site(s) down for a time that has slowly increased.
Last week my wife’s site was down for almost 2 days, this week we are almost into the 4th day. No response from the company. Even their own site is extremely slow.

I have 2 sites in question

  1. My wife’s site which is xx.com and has xx.com.au parked onto it
  2. My church’s site yy.org.au

All 3 URL’s are in my name and I have back up copies of both sites :shifty:
I do have yearly contracts with the hosting company. My wife’s has 4 months to go and the church has 6 months to go.

My wife’s business has appeared in a craft magazine and we will be losing big time with her site down.

How easy/hard is it to change hosting? How long would it take?
What do I need to do?
Is there a nice written step list somewhere?
Are there legal problems e.g. can the existing host prevent me from moving to another?
What about people who have my wife’s site stored as a favourite? Will this affect them?
Will it effect adversely on search engines if I was to move?

I am in Australia (so a buy Australia policy would be nice :D) but I am not adverse to hosting overseas (the current host is in the USA :nono:). Any recommendations? I am currently paying about $120AUD/year. My wife’s site is about 75Meg while the church is about 12Meg in size.

2

How easy/hard is it to change hosting? How long would it take?

It isn’t hard, and if it’s too much for you, most hosts will be willing to do transfer/restore the website content for you, for free or for a fee.

How long would it take?

There’s no way to really know for sure. If you do it yourself, a couple of hours at most, assuming that the sites aren’t big. An experienced user might need only a few minutes per website moved. A third party or your host might take longer, as you’ll probably be put in a queue. Smaller hosts might get to it right away and be friendlier about it. Then again, smaller hosts do have a higher tendency to not cope too well with unforeseen disasters (in the long run I mean), as a result of limited manpower and financial resources.

What do I need to do?

Buy a new hosting account, setup the sites (addon domains) there, restore the backups in each corresponding folder. If you have databases, create and restore them. You may have to update the scripts config file to add the new database login credentials. Test that the sites work fine at the new location (ask your new host for advice on how to do this), and change nameservers for each domain to point it to the new host - this last part is done at the domain registrar.

Are there legal problems e.g. can the existing host prevent me from moving to another?

Not really, as long as the domain names are in your name and you have direct control over them. From this POV, it’s safer to have a different company as your domain registrar.

What about people who have my wife’s site stored as a favourite? Will this affect them?

If the site has its own domain name, all the links to the site should continue to work just fine.

Will it effect adversely on search engines if I was to move?

All this prolonged downtime caused by your current host will have a temporary effect, but the host changing process does not influence your site’s rankings. You should start seeing the regular amount of traffic coming from the search engines.

Best of luck!

3

Will it effect adversely on search engines if I was to move?

The most important think for the SE is uptime. Remember about it and do everything possible to keep up good uptime.
Good luck

4

You have been with the company for about 3 years and now what to shift companies? maybe it worth to give them another chance?

5

Hello,

How easy/hard is it to change hosting? How long would it take?

It depends greatly on your current host. You can move your website very easily if you have a backup. If your current plan has cPanel it will be even easier to move to another host.

What do I need to do?

Create a backup of your hosting account or find a host that will transfer your site for you.

Are there legal problems e.g. can the existing host prevent me from moving to another?

You will need to look at your current hosts terms of service as you would have agreed to them when you signed up for your accounts. They may make it hard to transfer your domain name.

What about people who have my wife’s site stored as a favourite? Will this affect them?

Not at all. If you contact your host for help they should be able to sort out the transfer for you with little downtime. Once the transfer is complete your site will be back to normal.

Will it effect adversely on search engines if I was to move?

Not at all unless your site was down for a long period of time. Usually a transfer can be completed in 24 hours if you don’t need to transfer your domain name. If you need to transfer your domain that can take a few days.

Jack

6

After 7 days down and with no warning suddenly my wife’s site is back up again. :headbang:

During this time I managed to find out the registar of the domain name and it is now under my control.

I am in the process on transferring to a new hosting company.

What happens if the site appears on 2 separate hosts? Would it confused anyone (apart from myself :)) i.e how would e-mails, shopping carts handle this situation?
I really don’t want to let the original host company keep the site as I no longer trust them. How does one remove a site from one host to another without disruption or confusion?

7

Everyone will see the site at one or other hosting depending on whether the Domain Name Servers they are using (usually the one at their ISP) has picked up the change of location yet or not.

You can easily get into whichever of the two you want by placing an entry into the hosts file on your own computer (assuming you are running Windows, if not then other OS also have an equivalent to hosts). The entry attaches the domain name to one or other of the IP addresses of the hosting depending on which you currently want to access and regardless of what DNS have/haven’t updated.

So you can still access your mail at both places (I redirected all the mail going to my old hosting to a mail account not on either hosting last time I moved hosts).

The only real issue (assuming you have everything up and running on the new hosting before you update the nameservers on the domain to point to it) are any databases where your visitors can update the content as any updates made via the old hosting will not appear on the new hosting (the other way around doesn’t matter as no one will be visiting that hosting after a few days).

8

What happens if the site appears on 2 separate hosts? Would it confused anyone (apart from myself ) i.e how would e-mails, shopping carts handle this situation?
I really don’t want to let the original host company keep the site as I no longer trust them. How does one remove a site from one host to another without disruption or confusion?

I assume you have changed you name servers already? In 72 hours after the change your web site will be available from one web hosting location only.

9

Well if web hosting company is so ‘responsible’ when I guess you better changing your existing web hosting to some other web hosting.
If you have purchased domain with your exsiting web hosting company then i guess you better transfer it. I they have good user control panel you should transfer your domain easy without any glitches and it could be transferred within 48 hours, but if they have some extra authentications, etc and do not respond to your tickets when it will take much more time…
Also if you can login to your control panel just downloads the backup of your website and can be easily restored (even without good knowledge of web hosting), but also you can ask the new web hosting company to do the account transfer for you. Some of the companies even give up to 30% if you are moving from other web hosting company…Web hosting industry is very flexible these days and you can really find a quick solution to run away from your existing web hosting…