Moving a website is mostly about doing things in the right order. Almost every migration that goes wrong does so for one of three reasons: the DNS was changed before the site was tested, the email was forgotten, or the old account was cancelled too early.
Set aside about two hours for a small site. You will need access to your current hosting control panel, your domain registrar, and your new hosting account. If you do not have all three, get them before you begin — discovering halfway through that nobody knows the registrar login is a bad moment.
Prefer not to do this yourself? We migrate websites to Hostking free of charge, and we plan each move to avoid downtime. Ask us to handle it.
Before touching anything, download a complete copy of your site: all files, every database, and your email. Most control panels have a one-click backup. Keep it on your own computer, not just on the server you are about to leave — if the old host suspends the account mid-move, anything left there goes with it.
Create the account at your new host but do not point your domain at it yet. You want the site fully working on the new server before any visitor is sent there. Most hosts, including us, give you a temporary URL or a subdomain so you can test everything privately.
Upload your files to the new server, then import each database and update your site configuration to point at the new database name, user and password. On WordPress that is wp-config.php; on Joomla it is configuration.php. This is where most self-managed migrations go wrong — the files arrive but the database credentials still point at the old server.
Email is the part people forget, and it is the part that causes real damage. Every mailbox on the old server needs recreating on the new one before DNS changes, or mail sent during the switch will bounce or land somewhere you cannot reach.
Use the temporary URL or edit your computer’s hosts file to preview the site on the new server while the live domain still points at the old one. Click through properly — not just the homepage.
A day before the switch, drop your DNS TTL to 300 seconds. That tells the internet to re-check your records every five minutes instead of every few hours, so when you do change the A record the move happens quickly rather than trickling through over a day. Then update your nameservers or A record to the new host.
DNS propagation usually settles within a few hours, though it can take up to 48. Keep the old account alive until you are certain nothing is still being served from it. Cancelling early is the single most expensive mistake in a migration, because the data is gone and the backup you took in step one becomes the only copy.
Email stops working. The mailboxes were never recreated on the new server, so mail bounces from the moment DNS changes. Recreate every account in step four, before you switch.
The site loads but nothing saves. The files moved, the database did not — or the config file still points at the old database. Check your wp-config.php or configuration.php credentials.
Mixed content warnings after the move. The SSL certificate was not installed on the new server before DNS switched. Install it in step six, not afterwards.
Everything disappears. The old hosting was cancelled before propagation finished. Wait a full week, and keep the backup from step one regardless.
If you would rather not do any of the above, our team migrates your entire site — files, databases and email — at no cost, and we plan every migration to avoid downtime. You keep your existing site exactly as it is; only the server underneath changes.
A small brochure site usually moves in under an hour. DNS propagation then takes anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours, depending on the TTL you set beforehand. Larger sites with big databases take longer to transfer but the process is the same.
It should not. Because the site is fully working on the new server before DNS changes, visitors are served from one server or the other throughout — never from nothing. Downtime happens when people switch DNS first and migrate afterwards.
Only if the mailboxes are not recreated on the new server first. Set them up before switching DNS and mail continues to arrive. Messages already downloaded to your computer are unaffected either way.
When you change where your domain points, that change has to reach DNS servers worldwide. Each one caches the old answer for the length of your TTL. Lowering the TTL to 300 seconds a day beforehand makes the switch happen in minutes rather than hours.
Wait at least a week after the move, and only once you have confirmed both the website and email are being served from the new host. Cancelling early is irreversible — the data goes with the account.
No. We migrate your website to Hostking free of charge on any hosting plan, including the entry plan. Our team handles files, databases and email, and plans the move to avoid downtime.