Home Technical Support How To Switch Website Hosting Providers - Part IV

How To Switch Website Hosting Providers - Part IV

Step 8: Cancel Old Host

Now that you have successfully made the move, it is time to cancel your old account.  We recommend keeping your account at least one week after the DNS change.  If money is not a factor, then you may want to keep the old site for up to 2 weeks. (some servers around the world will take more than the standard 24-76 hours to propagate).

Step 9: Check Scripts

Once the DNS changes take effect and your site name is now showing your current site, it might be time to check your scripts again.  It is possible that your scripts worked on the new host only because they pointed to your old site.

If you had to change your scripts temporarily to point at the IP # rather than the site name, this is your chance to change them back.

Step 10: Check Links

It is always a good idea to run a link checker after the move is complete.  If you made temporary link changes, including links that point to the IP address or relative links that you would prefer to be absolute links, then you will want to make the appropriate changes.  Besides internal links, you may need to check external sites linking in.

If you changed your domain name or didn't have one, you will want to notify any site linking to you.  The best way to discover these sites is to look are your referrer log files and stats or do a reverse link check in google or alltheweb (these two search engines are considered the most comprehensive). 

Contact any of these sites to make sure they point to your new site.  Unfortunately, some site operators are either lazy or run a stale site, so you can be sure that not all referrers will make the change. 

Pay close attention to your stats or log files and look for any errors and how they occurred.  Your users may also email you if they have any problems with the site.

Congratulations!  You successfully moved your site to Brandblast.  With our reliability and prompt and courteous support, you can now relax and see why the pros choose Brandblast.