Technology

Migration

We (my hosting partners and I) recently migrated our websites from BlueHost over to DreamHost and so far I must say it has been a very pleasant and rewarding experience.  BlueHost treated us relatively well, for shared hosting at a reasonable yearly rate you can’t really ask for a better deal.  But DreamHost was a bit cheaper and had some very enticing extras that made them seem a lot more appealing.  But on to the main reason for this post, migration.

I wanted to write a quick blurb on migration.  Switching a simple non-dynamic HTML site takes no effort at all and goes as so:

1. Add a new domain to new hosting plan
2. Download the files locally
3. Upload the files to new hosting in the correct domain folder
4. Switch the DNS for the domain to the new hosting and wait for propagation

When we began the process  of moving our senselessly organized websites it became clear that this would be no simple flip-the-switch process, when it comes to sites that have dynamic and database elements.  I can’t even imagine what it would be like migrating a site that with any reasonable amount of pageviews.  But we came up with a relatively smooth way of dealing with sites that require a database be setup for their functionality.

1. Steps 1-3 from above
2. Export database from old hosting
3. Import database into new hosting
4. Change configuration file to adjust the database connections for new hosting
5. Switch the DNS for the domain and wait for propagation

With any luck you will see a switch without a hitch, in fact if done right you’ll wonder if it even happened.