Switching Hosting Companies

There are several reasons why people would normally want to switch hosting companies. You could be paying too much, the support offered by your hosting company could be lacking or maybe you would just like to upgrade and found a better deal elsewhere. Whatever the reason, the option should always be available to you - the owner - of your own domain.

There is a couple of things you need to do though:

• First register with the new host you want to use. Do not cancel with the old hosting provider, as they could end your account early and cause downtime to your site.
• You should now have two hosting accounts, one with the old and one with the new company. Next you need to transfer all your files from the old host to the new one. You can do this by connecting and downloading all your files from the old host with their FTP, then connecting and uploading your files to the new host through their FTP. If you choose to use BSD Hosting as your new host, we'll do this for you free of charge!
• Once all your files are transferred to the new host, you need to change your domain name dns. The dns is the address to where your website resides. Your new host should have provided you with their domain name servers (dns). If they haven't, you can contact them and ask for this information. DNS usually looks like this:
  

  ns1.black-spade.com
  ns2.black-spade.com

  Once you have this information, you can go to wherever you purchased the domain name from and make the changes. If you got the domain name from your hosting company, you'll need to ask them to make the dns changes for you. You will tell them this: "Hello my domain with you is ____ my username is ___ and my password _____ please change my domain names dns to ns1.thednsyoureceived.com and ns2.thednsyoureceived.com

  If this is still unclear, we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have or to do the changes for you.

• Once the dns information has been changed, it will take 48 Hrs for the site to load of the new host. During this time your site will randomly load of the old and then new host, untill your domains dns is finally propagated worldwide.
• Once the 48 Hrs have passed, your site should be loading only from the new host. You can now go ahead and cancel your hosting account with the old company.

If the above steps were followed, you should have had a seamless switch to your new hosting company, with no downtime at all.