Website Migration Tools & Tips
When your website grows up or your existing hosting provider can not serve you well any more, you have no choice but to transfer your data to another service. Website migration is a pain to many people because of the complicated configurations on new server space. Especially when you have to wait a long time for file downloading/uploading. But today we're going to guide you about how to move your website in quick time and avoid data loosing.
By tradtional methods, we need to download all files to local computer from old hosting service then upload everything to new server space. In case there's connection issue we always have to start over the process because we're not sure which file missed anywhere. If we have a large size website, we might need hours or even days to migrate over successfully. Thanks to the fast development for hosting service, we no longer need to deal with the boring task and waste our time for such transfer. We're going to introduce two best solutions.
NO.1 – SSH Wget File Transfer
Nowadays, more and more hosting providers support SSH connection to your hosting account. When it brings convenience for hosting management, we can also use the great file transfer facility and simplify our account migration process. Just a simple command and all files will be transfered to new server space by the most possible fast speed. Because the transfer is server to server, our local internet connection issue is avoided and you will see how amazing the transfer speed is! How to start SSH file transfer? Just look below.
First, you need login to your old account space and zip your website directory to your website root and make sure it's downloadable from your website such as http://yourwebsite.com/backup.zip. Now you need connect to your new server space via SSH client such as Putty. Once you're connected, send this command to terminal window "wget http://yourwebsite.com/backup.zip" then file transfer will be started. Just wait till the transfer completed. The waiting time will depend the actual file size that may take seconds to minutes but it's absolutely faster than FTP transfer.
When you use SSH file transfer solution, you must find a quality web hosting service who supports this protocol. For fast and stable SSH connection, we highly suggest check out Arvixe(www.arvixe.com) and Bluehost(www.bluehost.com) hosting plans. Their hosting come with SSH support by default as suggested by their service. If it's not enabled, just contact support for assistance and they will enable it for free. NOTE: SSH file transfer is only for linux hosting, it's not applicable for windows hosting service.
NO.2 – H-sphere File Downloading
There's a hosting control panel called H-sphere that comes with a bounch of great features for hosting management. It has simple navigation but powerful design for all hosting services. Especially when you like to migrate website from other space, H-sphere is probably your best choice for GUI operation. H-sphere comes with two file transfer protocols called "Wget" and "FTP". The Wget option is GUI version ssh service where you can download files from specific location directly. FTP option allows user to connect to any available ftp space and download files to your desired destination directory. Screenshots as below:
You can not really find better solution other than H-sphere control panel if you would like to simplify website migration process. It works with both windows and linux platforms so it's great choice if your website is developped under either technology. H-sphere is currently only supported by ixwebhosting service. They're great in providing cheap and rich feature hosting plans. Especially when you have high requirements for dedicated IPs, ixwebhosting be able to offer you up to 15 free IPs per hosting account.
Go to Ixwebhosting for plan details http://www.ixwebhosting.com
Website Migration Tips
It's very important to follow the correct migration process so as to reduce your website down time. In case it's the first time to deal with website transfer, please follow these steps:
- Backup your entire website folder and database if any
- Transfer all website data to new server space
- Test via temporary URL provided by new hosting provider to make sure everything works fine on new server
- Pick up a prefered time and change over domain DNS from registrar
When should you close old hosting service? It's not suggested cancel your old hositng service once your migration completed. You might need the old account access in case something not working properly from new server. If they learnt you're migrating away, they will not help with your new problems. So it's wise to let the old service alive for some time and close it when you really don't it anymore.
Should you use free website migration service from hosting provider? Many hosting providers now offer free website migration service in order to get more clients. However, we don't recommend to use this service because they might not completely understand your website structure and you have to deal with new problems. Instead, we highly suggest do it by yourself. In this way you can be familiar with the entire process and you won't seek for more help in case you need to migrate again in future.