Changing from one web host to another can become necessary if your website becomes popular and your current host can’t meet your needs for bandwidth, storage, etc. This can be especially true if your site is hosted on a free web host.

When you need to move your website, make sure you plan the move carefully. The first step in the process is to choose a new hosting company.

Once you have found a host that can meet all your needs, you need to move your site on to the new server. Before making any moves, be sure to back up your website from the old host.

If your website isn’t well structured and has been growing haphazardly, this is a good time to consider redesigning things. That could simply mean a new page design or it could mean redesigning your database and content storage.

Use a redirect page on your old site for the first 48 hours after you move it to a new host. This automatically forwards people to your new site and makes sure that your visitors are able to see your site even if its IP address hasn’t yet propagated.

It takes about 48 hours for a new website to be listed on most of the Internet’s domain servers, but after that everything should be fine. Here are a few more suggestions to ease the transition:

1. Check on whether your new host runs on Windows or Unix and make sure it will be compatible with everything you will move from your old host.

2. Find out how much storage space you will need for all your files and the content that is currently on your website. Make sure that you have enough storage space on your host to allow your site room to grow.

3. Check to see what services your new host offers, and make sure anything you have been using on your current host (like autoresponders, mail forwarding, etc.) is available.

4. If your current website uses Microsoft Frontpage, you want to be certain that your new host supports Frontpage extensions.

5. Check your new host’s policy on extra bandwidth to know where you’ll stand if your site keeps getting busier.

6. If the new host uses a shared server, make sure there won’t be any adult sites hosted on the same server. These can get busy and slow all the server’s other sites down.

7. Before you sign up, check some review sites and forums for customer feedback about the new host. This will give you a good idea of the level of service you can expect from the new host.

After you have uploaded your data to the new web host, test your site to ensure that it is working correctly. You should be able to preview your website on the new host before you complete the domain name switch to the new address.

Founder and actual CEO, Ricardo d’Argence has been in the field for more than twenty years. Alojate.com is now one of the best web hosting providers in Mexico, offering a range of solutions for all business needs. Servidores dedicados, Search Engine Optimization, factura electronica, web hosting & domain registration.