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What way to jump

My wife and I run our small business and have our website and emails hosted at Pipex. They used to be top draw but as we all know they are now ...... (you can fill in the blank). My questions are:

1. How easy is it to move away from Pipex and are there any traps I need to avoid?
2. Where should I move to?
3. Most importantly of all, is there likely to be down time on our web and email service?

Thanks in advance.
 
Hi PlateSpin,

Have you just got hosting or are you talking about broadband to?
Do you have any domain names, and if so, what type are they (.co.uk or .com etc)
 
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Hi PlateSpin,

It's not too difficult to move and shouldn't involve much in the way of downtime, essentially you need to:

1. Ensure you have the ability to manage your domain name. You need to be able to login to a domain management area somewhere (normally with the company you registered your domain name with) - once logged in you should have "Change IPS Tag" and "Change Nameservers" options.

2. Login to your webspace and make a complete backup of all the files to your local PC.

3. Find a new provider and set up a hosting account - ISPReview run a sister site called over at http://www.host-review.co.uk with hosting company reviews.

4. Your new hosting provider will provide you with their "Nameserver" addresses, this is where you need to login to your domain management tool and modify the Nameserver addresses accordingly.

5. Login to your new webspace and upload all of the files from the earlier backup.

6. Login to your new hosting control panel and create the required email addresses/aliases.

7. Sit back and wait! Nameserver changes can take up to 24 hours to propagate, in the run-up to this change Pipex will still be hosting your website and emails, once the change occurs to the Nameservers the new company will automatically take over the running of the website and emails.

I mentioned the "IPS Tag" earlier, changing this Tag changes essentially changes the company who look after the billing and overall control of your domain name. If the domain was registered through Pipex, the IPS Tag will be pointing to them. Simply changing the Nameservers still gives Pipex billing/renewal control over the domain (even though they will not be hosting your website and emails)

If you do not wish this to be the case, you should be able to transfer your domain to the new hosting company. Simply ask the new company what their IP Tag is, change it in your domain control panel and after a few hours the new hosting company will take overall control and be your new point of contact when it comes to billing/renewing.

I hope the above makes sense - let me know if you need further clarification. Also, the above isn't an exhaustive list but should give you a basic idea of the processes required and the steps to take.
 
Last edited:
Essentially as Bricktop said, so long as you have control of the domain then it should just be a matter of transferring it over to the new host. Naturally some downtime (around 2 days) is unavoidable because the domains DNS servers will need to re-propagate but that should be all. Everything else to do with the sites backup and restoring on to the new host is all down to your own knowledge of the content.

My advice would be to find a new host first and copy your files across to check that the basics work. Most good hosts will allow you to use a temporary URL to view the spaces content until you move the domain later. Some of your content may not work properly without the domain, though this is usually a matter of temporary URL adjustments; automated systems often have these problems (full path locations will also change).

It's not always an easy process since no two hosts have an identical setup but then that's part of the fun :) . Hmm maybe not. There's nothing easy about hosting, it is quite technical, unless your site is totally unautomated.
 
Yes, with a standard, static site it's much easier to move than if your website is a Dynamic website running PHP/MySQL and the like!

If you made it yourself using Frontpage/Dreamweaver then the chances are it's a static site - moving it is simply a case of downloading the files from the one webserver and uploading them to the new.

If it runs on a database-driven backend (normally MySQL) then you will need to ensure your new host supports MySQL databases and your hosting plan includes one, then backup the old database, create a new one at the new host, import the database, then change any database references in your PHP code to point to the new database server.

Phew! Let's hope it's option 1 eh?

;)
 
Bricktop / Mark J

Thanks guys, It all makes perfect sense to me - well point one of Bricktops' list is a bit over my head but hey!!

What I can say is that it's a very simple site we have with just a few forms etc but it's the potential loss of an email service that worries the hell out of me.
 
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So long as the .co.uk domain is registered to your name, which you can check by doing a WHOIS, then it should be fine. The new host only needs to support e-mail and once the domain has been transfered then you'll merely need to re-setup the address again and it'll work once more after a few hours.

To do a WHOIS you just need to go here:
http://www.host-review.co.uk/tools/whois/index.php

Stick the domain name in (e.g. ispreview), then select the prefix (e.g. .co.uk) and submit. On the new page it should tell you that the domain has been taken, so just click WHOIS and look for the Registrant: details. It will hopefully either be in your name or your companies name and not the current hosts, which would present a problem.

Being co.uk you should have had a letter from Nominet (http://www.nominet.org.uk) about how to administer the domain. If not then hopefully Pipex will give you some method of doing it. Should you run into problems then come back and we'll try to help.
 
Thanks Mark. You're right, the domain is in our name thank god. Now it's time to deal with Pipex - oh joy!!

No doubt I'll be back in the not to distant future with more tales of woe.
 
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