Moving Your Website: The 5 Checks That Matter

Moving a website to a new host feels risky because the horror stories are real: sites down for days, email vanishing, orders lost. Nearly every one of those disasters comes from skipping a check that takes minutes. This article gives you the five checks that matter. Get these right and your move to InterProWebHost will be boring, which is exactly what you want. If you would rather we handle the whole thing, see How Free Migration Works at InterProWebHost.

Check 1: Take a complete backup first

Before anything moves, back up everything at your current host: website files and the database. For WordPress, a backup plugin or your current host’s backup tool both work. Download a copy to your own computer too, not just on the old server. A migration without a backup is a gamble. A migration with one is just a procedure.

Check 2: Know what your site actually needs

List what your website depends on before you move it. The common gotchas:

• PHP version: old sites sometimes rely on outdated PHP. Check what your site runs on now and make sure the new hosting supports it.
• Email: where do your domain’s emails live? If email runs on the old host, decide where it goes before you move. See Setting Up Titan Business Email in 10 Minutes.
• Subdomains and extras: staging sites, client portals, and webmail all need to move or be recreated.
• SSL certificate: plan to have HTTPS working on the new hosting before you point the domain at it.

Check 3: Move everything before you switch DNS

The correct order is: set up the new hosting account, copy the website and database over, test it thoroughly, and only then change your nameservers. Changing DNS first and migrating second is backwards, and it is the number one cause of migration downtime. Your new hosting can usually be tested with a temporary URL or by previewing before the domain points at it.

Check 4: Test like a visitor, not like the owner

Before switching DNS, click through the copied site as if you were a customer. Test the homepage, the contact form, the checkout if you sell online, and logins if you have member areas. Submit a real test form and confirm the email arrives. Broken contact forms are the most common thing people discover after a move, and they are easy to catch beforehand.

Check 5: Switch DNS, then watch and wait

Only when the new copy is fully tested do you point the domain at InterProWebHost. See How to Point Your Domain to InterProWebHost for the steps and How Long Does DNS Propagation Take for the timeline. Keep the old hosting account active for at least a week after the switch. If anything was missed, you can roll back in minutes instead of rebuilding from scratch.

The one week rule

Do not cancel the old hosting the day the move completes. Keep it for a week. Check that email flows, forms arrive, and nothing references the old server. Then cancel with confidence. The cost of one extra week of old hosting is trivial compared to the cost of discovering a problem after the old account is gone.

A final note on timing

Schedule the DNS switch for a quiet period, not Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. Midweek mornings are ideal: the full business day is ahead if anything needs attention, and DNS has the rest of the week to settle. Tell anyone who might notice, like staff who take orders through the site, when the move is happening so a brief oddity does not become a panic.

Still stuck? Open a support ticket and tell us your domain, your current host, and what kind of site you are moving. We will plan the move with you.