Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Procedures for a seamless website transition

Options
  • 03-01-2009 11:04pm
    #1
    Joseph
    Registered Users Posts: 1,521 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    I am running a VPS hosting package with Blacknight hosting. I was wondering could someone summarize the step by step guidelines for the following:

    Company already has blah.com website with their own hosting, their own domain and name and dns servers, I want to transfer the hosting to my own VPS package, point the dns and name to my vps package - then when the domain is up take control of it myself on behalf of this company.

    I am doing the following and would appreciate any tips/guidelines - the company is expecting a seamless transition without any downtime. I.e. can I prepare the website (which requires mysql etc) on my VPS package - then just point to that site, how does it work? Bit of a novice in the area

    Kind Regards,


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    Sully
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 24,056 Mod ✭✭✭✭Sully


    Probably easier ways to do it but this is what I would do probably..

    1) Take all files from old server and move them onto new server. If any of the files have configurable data such as path names - update them. Examples; Web Forum software - will need to update the config files so that the new paths (and database information if required) are reflected.

    2) If you have a database on the server, export it and import to new database. Again, make sure that if there is new database names users and passwords that its matched in the config files pulling data from the database.

    At this stage both your files and database is on the new server. You could go directly to the server and it should work fine depending on your setup. All thats needed now is to update your domain config to point to the new nameservers.


  • Options
    #3
    Mr. Magoo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 30 ✭Mr. Magoo


    Went through this process a few months ago, busy website so we definitely didn't want downtime.

    Step one was to do as suggested, copy the site over to the new server and tested everything was working correctly, config files updated etc.

    We then setup a www2 subdomain in the DNS pointing to the new server, gave that a few days to propagate.

    We then added a temporary redirect rule on the old server to direct any requests for www.blah.com/* to www2.blah.com

    We then updated the main DNS record to point to the new servers IP address.

    This meant that anybody using the updated DNS record went to www.blah.com on the new server and anyone using an old cached DNS record requested www.blah.com on the old server and apache redirected to www2.blah.com which pointed to the new server.

    After a few days when everyones DNS was updated we just turned off the old machine with no downtime and no discrepancy between the versions of the site and more importantly the entries in the database.


Advertisement