Web site migration

It seems I am more and more often responsible for migrating a web site from one host to another. Here is very general outline of the things the person I am working for needs to know.

Choosing a host

Personally, I like to use the services of companies who have ethical and caring practices. Unfortunately, I have not yet found my "ideal" hosting company, one that completely shares my values and combined with a complete technical offering at a reasonable (although not necessarily the cheapest) price.

The ethical stances that I would expect from a host can be the subject of a future article... or even the subject of a whole, future web site.

Technically, beside the standard features necessary to host a strong Drupal web site, a secure shell access is a must. I refuse to administer a web site via FTP. Beside the fact that FTP is not a secure protocol, it's simply impossible to have a well-organized multi-site set up via FTP.

Once the host chosen, you would need to subscribe to their services and provide me with the panel login credentials.

Domain

At some stage, when the installation at the new host is ready, we'll need to make the final switch from the old host. Hopefully, your domain name registrar is not your current host. Make sure you have access to your domain name management panel at your registrar. Do you have the user name and password? You need to find the place where you'll need to update the DNS entries, when told to do so.

The best practice is to have the host and the domain name registration serviced by different companies. If you need to, I recommend that you transfer your domain name to http://www.gandi.net/ .

Emails

Migrating a web site also entails migrating the emails depending on the same domain name.

I will need the precise answer to the following questions:

What protocol do you use to consult your mails? POP3 (i.e. you download all the emails from the remote mail server into your local dedicated email client)? or IMAP / webmail (i.e. your email remains at the remote mail server).

If you use IMAP / webmail, all your emails will have to be migrated at the same time as the web site. I have never had to do it, and it can be troublesome.

In any case, we'll have to set up the same email addresses at the new server as at the old one.

Code

I'll set up the code / software at the new host, so that everything is ready to run when we do the switchover.

Database

Often, we'll be migrating a dynamic web site with a database on the back end. I will need more than one dump of your whole database, depending on the activity level of your web site.

Depending on the circumstances, this can be something easy or very complicated. With a shell access to your current host, I can manage a dump of the database myself. Making a backup of the database via phpmyadmin can be troublesome, depending on the size of the database. Sometimes processes die out or other crazy stuff like this that I already experienced.

Failing everything else, we'll need the cooperation of your current host to get a full backup of the database.

I'll need a first copy, only for testing purposes, to check that the new web site is properly set up. Once everything is ready for the final switchover, we'll need a final, complete copy of the database after having put the old web site offline, override the test copy with the last backup at the target host and, finally, do the DNS switch for your domain.

Other

This is only a brief overview of the different steps necessary to migrate a small to medium web site from one host to another. I'll complete this article when needed.