Migrating Your Website
Many people regularly pop up the question of moving to another web host or IP address without having any kind of hiccups in Google. I completed a successful test of moving mattcutts.com from one IP to another by changing the host, which I will share with you. if you have a static website or you can spare a day when your website can oscillate between 2 IP addresses, it would be easier, but if your website is a dynamic one, things will be a bit difficult for you, though the concept remains the same. Let’s go through the steps involved in this.
Step 1: Sign up with a good web host provider
You can do some research work or follow some references to find a good web host for yourself. I preferred by present web host (csoft.net), which I selected after research, and I also found that the readership of the site was growing beyond my expectation. A non-SEO friend of mine used pair.com. Let me refer to the example using IP addresses. If we move from csoft.com to pair.com, the IP would change from 63.x.x.x to 65.x.x.x. DNS is a system used for mapping websites to the IP address which a machine uses, like, say, 61.115.6.132.
Step 2: The aspect of Creating a backup of your website on the new web host
Having a static website is good as that would mean that just copying the whole file to the new web host – that is all. Having a blog makes it harder as it usually involves MySQL for storage of posts. Some e-commerce websites are more difficult for this reason as the database is always synced. In this case, you may have to set up a replica of the database between the old and new locations during the switch.
Well, here, an instance is given of a WordPress blog that makes use of MySQL database and can come up with a bit of problem for some hours. Just imagine that you have made use of FTP in order to copy the static files from one web host to other. A new MySQL database has to be created now. The same username and database name might work but if it doesn’t, you are in need of putting the WordPress wp-config.php on the new location with a view to update the username, database name, and other relevant things.
You now have a new SQL database so you can get away with the old one, copy it to the new one, and then load the database there.
Keep in mind that you not only have a username and a password for both the web hosts, but different usernames and passwords for the database at every single location. You may also have the MySQL database stored on a unique location, which is the reason I showed the host option while database restoration. Also, if the new host has a unique option for the database, you will be required to edit the wp-config.php file, else WordPress will be unable to access the database on your new host.
At two separate locations, you do have the same copies of your website. The issue of maintaining both the databases synchronized is only applicable to the vast and e-commerce based site. Whereas, someone altering your database at the transition period or a comment getting posted is nothing serious provided your blog is endowed with update of some comments regularly.
Step 3: Changing the DNS to point to the new web host
This is the most important thing. When Googlebot or anyone tries to reach your site, they first look for your IP address. They do their best to ensure the genuineness by rechecking the IP address after about 500 fetches, or even check if certain number of hours have elapsed. Usually people using DNS-enabled browsers are affected by TTL [a setting - Time to Live], which is measured in seconds and says “The IP address you fetched will be safe for ‘x’ seconds; you can cache this IP address and not bother to look it up again for that many seconds.” The browser will move very slowly as you have tracked the IP address for all the content on each webpage of your website.
For DNS, TTL assumes a significant role. A couple of websites like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. have pretty short DNS TTL setting of about 300-900 seconds. This is because if you have many data centers, you would like to take one of them down to enable the data center mechanics to provide good data to the machines. If you have a short TTL, you would be able to pull the IP address of a data center out of the rotation in merely a couple of minutes.
The ‘Google Dance’ phenomenon lasted for about a week and would show the old as well as the new results depending on the data center which the user hit. This is because every data center was taken down and brought back up after loading with new data. T needed many days to switch the data to all the centers. Webmasters checked out www2.google.com or www3.google.com as they led them to the latest data centers. Today, the production system is better equipped to switch these things in much less time.
Step 4: Wait while the DNS change is propagated through the internet
Basically, this is a TTL function, and is based on whether you are actually switching to those name servers which are present in the DNS currently. Keep in mind that DNS is hierarchical, and it will take time for the DNS caches to be flushes as the TTL is exceeded. This switch, which cakes place at the root of DNS, would be quicker only if you use a smart registrar and a known set of the new name servers. The ‘dig+trace domain’ can be used in UNIX and Linux for verifying hat the new name server is present on the root server.
Step 5: You are almost done with your task when you are sure that Googlebot is fetching from the new web host and the IP address. In such a case, the old website can be shut down.
With the aid of your domain, your IP address can be verified. Make yourself familiar with the proceedings and remember that the new visitors should be endowed with the new IP address, whereas, it is possible for the previous visitors to employ the old IP address from their DNS store. Permitting a couple of days is recommended because it is possible for some people to possess long TTL set, although, these are mostly meant for a day or even less. So, get rid of hosting on the old location after a day. In order to have an infallible verification on this, test your logs and it is perfect if your log doesn’t show any previous visitors.
About the author: William MacMahon is a professional writer in the web hosting industry. Visit WebHostingMadness .com to read his reviews on the top hosting companies each month.
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