Well, that was hardly painless was it? Yes, I’m finally on a much better Hostgator Server. Big thanks to Adam, who put up with my “Test it! Test it! Test it!” emails for most of Tuesday, and generally being rather helpful. However, even though I have done the whole backup – move – nameserver thing before, I still run into problems. So, as a little bit of a handy hint to you, here’s 3 tips for changin server
1. Back Up Everything First
Seriously, it’s a given. Just open up your FTP server and download everything, even if you don’t need it. If you have WordPress make sure you back up the uploaded images folder (which is wp-content/uploads/), or else you will be in trouble!
2. Write Down The Important Settings
Yeah, I know you think it’s easier just to guess which plugins you have added, but it really isn’t. Just write down exactly what plugins you use and then activate them when reuploading your site.
3. When all uploaded, test, test, test
When I got the blog uploaded, I thought “sod it it works”. Then I had a message saying that the comments don’t work, then I had an e-mail saying that the e-mails don’t work.
The easiest way of preventing reader frustration is just to quite simply test everything. Do the comments work? Can you get e-mail? Can you send e-mail? Can you search? Anything and everything that can possibly go wrong needs testing, so test it.
Right, I’m off to watch England get knocked out of the Euros. I will laugh heartily at their potential exit, or cry when we have to endure another summer of one sided biasedness from the television. We shall see. If Croatia win I’m going on holiday there next year!
Comments: 6 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
So how come Wales aren’t in the Euro qualifiers?
Celeste – they were, but they didn’t qualify either.
Rhys – Here you go mate! http://www.thomson.co.uk/destinations/europe/croatia/holidays-croatia.html
and then they were out…
I thought ‘yippee, no football filled tv !” but it turns out that my missus’s daughter will watch any kind of football. even foreign stuff. at least with england, I know the names of one or two of the players
I just moved to Hostgator recently and I was very happy with how easy it was.
They have a free transfer, so I had them move my sites for me for free, and so far I’m happy with the performance.
@Kyle Do they? Wow, nobody told me that
You can find the free transfer form here:
http://www.hostgator.com/transfer.php
My biggest complaint is there website isn’t very easy to navigate, but the free transfer is something they advertise and offer.
They move all your databases and everything. There was absolutely nothing to setup once it was done, I just had to redirect my nameservers.