Switching Hosting providors and moving to Burton Hosting - the easy way

Switching to us is normally a very smooth process, but sometimes it can turn out to be more complicated than it needs to be! Following our steps below will help to ensure that your move is a painless one! Welcome to our family!

Step One - Do not cancel!

Make sure not to cancel with your old hosting provider just yet. For the time being we need to keep that contract going until we have everything on our servers for your website.

Step Two - Sign up and transfer your files

Establish your desired hosting account with us. Once this is established you will then need to use the details we provide to upload your entire site from your old providor to us. This can be done by connecting to their ftp and downloading all your files. Then connecting to us and uploading them. If you have any difficulty then we will happily do this for you! Please submit a support ticket via our helpdesk! If you have any databases they must also be exported from your old host and uploaded to our system - e.g. forum, guestbook, shopping card etc are all usually database driven.

Step Three - Verify your files are uploaded, make settings and changing the DNS (Name Servers)

Now we have your files on our system you should preview your site using the link we provided in your welcome email. In addition, you should log in to the control panel and re-create any email accounts or custom settings you may have had at your previous host. Following this you then need to change the DNS records to point to us (don't worry about the complicated terminology here).

To do this we need to update your name servers to point to ours. This can be performed one of two ways:
1) If you registered your domain name at a domain name providor, log in there and provide them with our name servers as provided - ns1.burtonhosting.com and ns2.burtonhosting.com.
2) If your domain was registered with your old host then we need to ask them to update the name servers to ours - "Please change my domain's name servers to ns1.burtonhosting.com and ns2.burtonhosting.com".

At this point they will know you are canceling if changing the name servers from their system. If you wish to transfer your domain inbound so that we are your registrar, please contact us and we will happily arrange this for you.

Step Four - Propagation - the waiting game

Once your name servers have been changed to ours, it can often take upto 72 hours for the domain to fully resolve to our system and work with our servies. Meanwhile your domain should still load at your current providor so you should not experience downtime. Make sure to keep checking your email accounts at your current providor whilst they are also re-pointed at our system!

Step Five - Cancel with your old providor and relax with us

Once you are satisfied that your site is working correctly on our system - it's time to cancel with the old host! Now, relax, you're in good hands! Remember, at any point along the way please feel free to submit a support request and we will happily assist you.

If you completed all the above steps you have successfully switched to us with no downtime at all! SUCCESS

Rev 1.0 MJB March 2007