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5  Transfer the site to another hoster

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A site and its domain can be transferred to another hoster.

Recommendation

Up to 48 hours may be needed to perform this procedure, during which email access will be disrupted. Accordingly, doing this over a weekend may cause the least disruption.

A site may become very popular and it may begin to slow down because the hosting plan's resource limits are being pushed. That means trying to find a better plan that may be available cheaper than from the site's current hoster. When that is done, this procedure can be used to shift the site and its domain to the new hoster.

It can be complex!

This is a complex technical process. For those who are challenged by such things, seek help from someone who is very familiar with email clients and cPanel to do or help with this if it feels too overwhelming.

Note that this procedure can only be used for a single addon domain because the primary account domain can only be transferred by moving everything, including all sites and email accounts, and that is best handled by the new hosting provider's transfer team, possibly by giving them temporary access (using a temporary password) to the account at your current provider.

Steps

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The roles to perform this procedure are:
  1. a.Site owner
  2. b.Master manager.
To transfer a site to another hoster:1Overall setup procedureSite owner

for the target site, with all the same email accounts and forwarders, but Smallsite Design will be loaded from a full archive file at step 5 here.

2Finalise all edits on the old site

by closing off any articles open for editing.

3Create a full archive on the old serverSite owner  Master manager

by performing:

3-1Open the Site page

by clicking the Site link in the Other section of the Work list page.

3-2Create a full archive

by clicking the Archive button in the first table row of the Archives section.

A row will be added to the table with the archive details.

3-3Download the archive file

by clicking the Download link in the archive file's row, then navigating to the desired location in the resulting dialog box.

4Explain the upcoming move

by performing:

4-1Create an articlewith:
  1. a.A headline like MOVING SITE TO NEW HOST. Uppercase is deliberate.
  2. b.An explanation of when it will happen and how long it will take.
  3. c.A warning to avoid sending emails during that time as they risk being lost.
4-2Add to subsite navigation bars

by using Create links to add a link to the article as the first in each subsite's Subsite navigation bar.

This has another purpose, and that is that because the article is not in the navigation bars in the archive, it is easy to tell when the new site is active because there will be no article.

5Load site files on the new serverSite owner  Master manager

by performing:

5-1Go to the domain's root folder

by performing Delete a site, ending at step 3.

5-2Initiate an upload

of the saved archive, by clicking the Upload link in the menu bar.

A new File Upload page for the folder is displayed:Sample file upload page
5-3Copy the archive filefrom step 3, by either:
  1. a.Dragging-and-dropping the file from the computer's file manager program onto the Drop files here to start uploading area.
  2. b.Clicking the Select File button, then navigating to the file in the resulting Open dialog, then clicking its Open button.
The uploading process is shown until 100% is reached:Sample completed file upload page

The progress bar will change from green to red when the file is shown in the folder.

5-4Close the page

by clicking on the X in its tab or window.

5-5Select the archive file

by clicking on it in the File Manager page.

5-6Initiate the extraction of files

by clicking the Extract button in the menu bar.

The Extract dialog is displayed:Sample Extract dialog
5-7Extract the archive's files

by clicking the Extract Files button in the menu bar.

The Extract File popup is displayed, listing all files extracted:Sample Extraction Results popup
5-8Close the popup

by clicking on the X in its caption bar.

The new site will not be able to modified until the DNS servers at the domain name registrar are pointed to the new site's servers at step 11.

6Delete the archive file

by performing:

6-1Select the archive file

by clicking on it in the File Manager page.

6-2Initiate the deletion

by clicking the Delete button in the menu bar.

The Trash dialog is displayed:Sample Trash dialog for an archive file
6-3Delete the file

by checking the Skip the trash and permanently delete the files box, then clicking the Confirm button.

The results are:
  1. a.The dialog is removed.
  2. b.The file is deleted.
7Transfer emails

if needing to have current emails available under the domain at the new hoster.

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