Transferring your account to us can be an easy process with zero downtime if done properly. To do so you only need a little preparation and allow for about 3-4 days overlap between the two hosts. Your primary concern is having control of your domain names. This is paramount as you will need to be able to change the nameservers for the domain name.
NOTE: Do not change your nameservers or cancel your old account at your previous service provider yet!
- First go to our domain registration wizard, choose to transfer your domain to us and one of our hosting plans. When you transfer your domain to us we will automatically add one year to the current expiration date, so you don't lose any time for which you've already paid. After your payment is verified you will get your setup email within minutes. In there will be all your usernames / passwords that grant you access to the server and account management.
- You will be able to access your new account using the server's IP address provided in your setup email. Upload your website through FTP.
- In your welcome email, you will get a temporary link to access your new web site before anything goes live. You can view your site to make sure its working properly (graphics, web pages, links, etc...) by pointing your browser to the url provided in your setup email that contains your server ip and username. (for example: http://123.123.123.1/~USERNAME/ where 123.123.123.1 is replaced with the ip of your server).
- Once the new server is tested and functions as needed via IP address, log in to your domain name registrar interface and update the DNS nameservers to ns1.digitalexploits.com & ns2.digitalexploits.com. It will take 12-48 hours for dns updates to propagate throughout the world.
- (optional) If you use a high traffic, database driven site, it is wise to setup remote access to the database on your old web hosting server during the DNS propagation process. This ensures that your database stays in sync and up to date all on one server.
- Continue to check email on both the old and new hosting servers via IP address to ensure that no communications are lost during the DNS propagation.
- If after 48 hours you can not access your domain on our servers please do a whois query on your domain to ensure your name servers are set to those provided in the welcome email. If they have not been updated yet please contact your registrar to get it corrected.
- Once your domain has propagated to our network you can begin using your own domain name to access your website. You can now close your hosting account at your previous provider if you switched to us from another provider.
- Please ensure the admin contact email address is active because an email will be sent to this address to approve the transfer. You can check this contact info by doing a WHOIS query. If the query lists an incorrect email address, please go to where you registered the domain and update it before starting the transfer process.
- Once you have processed the transfer, watch for an approval email from both the losing registrar and us (the gaining registrar). After approving both wait approximately 24-48 hours for whole process to be completed. If transfer fails please contact your registrar to make sure the domain is not locked.
- After about 72 hours DNS propagation should be complete and if all testing shows your new account is fully functional you can close the old account and close your old account at your previous registrar and enjoy the luxury of true and unmatched hosting here at Digital Exploits!
Following the above steps will prevent any downtime for your site and allow you to ensure that neither emails nor database updates are lost in the transfer process.