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Setting Up Your Account
What is involved in moving an existing website and e-mail accounts to Summersault?
This document discusses the processes and issues involved in moving an existing website hosted by a third party to Summersault's hosting services. If you need to move your account from Summersault to a third party, see this entry instead.
Introduction
In this discussion, we assume a number of things:
- That you have reviewed Summersault's hosting packages and have found a package that offers features equal or greater than your current hosting arrangement.
- That you or your organization has legal ownership of your current/old hosting account, and can authoritatively request that changes be made to it, including that it be shut down.
- That you have filled out a hosting setup request (from the form on the bottom of the page for the hosting package you're choosing) to initiate the site setup with Summersault.
There are four main components of a hosting setup that need to be independently dealt with as a part of moving a site to Summersault's hosting services:
- The DNS / domain registration information
- The website itself (files, software, images, etc.)
- E-mail accounts associated with the domain
- Cleaning Up
In a best case scenario, the site can be transferred within 24 hours of starting the process, and involve no disruption of services. In a worst case scenario, the transfer could take several weeks, and involve downtime of the website, delays in receiving e-mail, or other disruptions.
The key to a smooth and successful site move is arranging for the transfer of these three components in a way that minimizes disruption of these services.
Transferring DNS / Domain Registration
The domain registration and DNS information for your website is the information that tells the rest of the world how to access your website; the equivalent of the Internet phonebook mapping website names to numeric addresses. The information is likely "pointing" website visitors to your current hosting service. To transfer the site to Summersault, the information needs to be updated so that it points to Summersault.
The easiest way to do this is to transfer your domain registration using Summersault's domain services system. Our registration prices are some of the lowest available ($15/year and less), and you get our excellent personal support instead of sitting on the phone with other registrars.
Another method is to provide Summersault staff with vendor-level access to your domain registration. This is usually an account name and password provided to you when you registered your domain. Once Summersault has this information, we can go in and make the needed changes so that the domain registration points to our servers. Note that this can be done in such a way that the site can continue to be hosted at your current/old provider until Summersault "flips the switch". But having the DNS information transferred is a prerequisite for this process.
If you don't have the account information for your domain, you will need to contact the registrar where you originally registered the domain and ask them to reset it and send it to you. This can sometimes take several days or even weeks, so you should be sure to obtain your account information well before you need the site to actually be transferred.
In some cases, you may want to move an existing website to Summersault, but use a new domain name and discard the old one. If this is the case, just user our domain services system to register the new domain to point to Summersault directly.
If your DNS setup is more complex and requires a customized setup / transfer process, Summersault will be happy to work with you and your technical staff on this.
Transferring the Website Itself
Your website consists of a number of files that are located on the server belonging to your current/old website hosting provider. To move the site to Summersault, those files need to be uploaded to our server. You don't necessarily have to have access to the site at its current location; if you have another copy of the site (perhaps on your desktop computer), you can use that to upload to Summersault.
Once you've submitted a hosting setup request, Summersault will establish an account on our server and send you the access information needed to upload the website files. Note that this can be done before transferring the site from the current/old hosting provider, so as to avoid any disruption in services.
Note that some aspects of your website may be configured specifically for the hosting environment that your site is currently in. That may include things like web-to-email forms, references to special programs located on your current server, or other programs that help your site work. These items may need to be reconfigured once they are moved to Summersault's server. Summersault staff are happy to help advise in this process, but note that because this sort of work crosses from "site hosting" into the area of "site management", it is not a standard part of the hosting setup process and may require billable time to complete. Summersault staff will consult with you about your needs and possible costs before incurring any billable time.
Transferring e-mail accounts is perhaps the trickiest part of moving a website, because e-mail is often a more critical part of your site hosting package. People sending you e-mail expect it to get to you without delay, and you expect to be able to send and receive e-mail without disruption.
If you are not using the e-mail accounts associated with your website domain, or if you have a very simple setup that only involves forwarding addresses (e.g. "sales@yourdomain.com" is forwarded to "you@aol.com"), then please let Summersault know this in advance, as it will simplify the setup process.
The technical complexities and possible issues involved in transferring e-mail accounts are beyond the scope of this document, but the basic process looks like this:
- Summersault provides you with access to our traditional mail administration tools or cPanel access.
- You use those tools to set up the needed e-mail accounts, forwards, aliases, and mailing lists. These will be inactive at this time.
- Summersault changes the routing of your e-mail configuration such that all new incoming e-mail comes to your accounts at Summersault, instead of your old hosting provider.
- You change your e-mail configuration so that you are sending and receiving e-mail through Summersault instead of your old e-mail provider
- For a few days following this change, you should go back and check for mail on your old hosting provider's server, as the routing change may take a few days to propagate around the world.
- After the change is complete, you tell your old hosting provider to remove your e-mail setup on their servers
Once your website has been successfully moved, you'll want to get in touch with your old hosting provider and make sure they shut down your account. This may seem like a step you can put off, but it's actually important that this happen soon after your site has been moved for a variety of reasons.
Conclusion
After reading all of that, transferring a website may sound like a daunting task. Rest assured, most transfers are very straightforward and involve minimal hassle on your part. In any event, Summersault staff will be working with you to ensure that the transfer goes as smoothly as possible, and with minimal disruption to your website or e-mail services.
If you have any questions or concerns about the process or this document, please contact us.
If you still have questions or need assistance, please submit a technical support request.
Last update: 2007-10-12 05:28
Author: Summersault Support
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