Singapore Web Hosting Blog

how to move my web site to your service? this question has been asked many time.

often, client has an existing web site and would like to move to a new hosting provider. if planned properly, the migration is smooth, no downtime will occur.

here’s how.

1)first, make a full backup. if your web pages are all static, you, or your web designer, should have a complete copy, but just in case, make a backup no matter what. if yours is dynamic, such as forum or blog, you have to do a backup. to backup, either download everything on current server to your local computer, or make use of backup feature of your hosting account control panel. or better, do both.

2)sign up for new/our hosting account. once we receive payment, we’ll activate account and email you order confirmation together with account information on the same day.

3)login to our hosting account control panel, create email accounts, restore backup if your previous provider uses cpanel as well, or upload web pages mannually. please note this is done on our server while the old account is still running. so before you do anything to domain name, the same content exist on both server, ours and previous provider’s.

4)go to domain management control panel, update DNS to our nameservers. this is not hosting account control panel, it’s domain management control panel. where you bought domain name may or may not be the same as where you bought hosting account. you may need to ask your current hosting provider to change DNS for you if they registered domain on behalf of you but didn’t give you access info.

5)wait for up to 72 hours ( in theory, in reality 24 hours is all it takes in most cases.) so that new DNS can be propogated all over the world. during this period, some visitors will hit new/our server, some will hit previous server, but since you have exactly same copy on both server, visitors won’t notice it. for .com .net .org domain names, this process takes only a few minutes nowadays.

of course, sometimes it’s more complicated. for example, if you run a forum, you need to close it while migration, otherwise content on your site keep changing, you won’t have a final version to move.

if you would like to transfer the domain name to new host as well, you’d better ask new host to initiate transfer process after site migration is complete.

last friday i went to the Bill Gates Live in Singapore event organized by IDA at suntec.

although im afraid we still prefer Unix as server platform (for good reason, otherwise Unix wouldn’t occupy 85%+ market share), however it’s great to see Bill Gates in person. he is smartest businessman. and he is one of the smartest programmers in the world i guess. is he still doing any actual programming work?

many do not like microsoft products. i use firefox, seldom use IE now. but it’s neat to see the richest man in the world, isn’t? well, the nearest i saw him was at least 50m away, i was looking at the projector most of the time during his speech.

his speech was rather short, 20 or 30 minutes. not that interesting at all. invention of next 10 years will be more than all inventions in past 30 years, many equipments TV, microwave etc. will be connected, hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper, the core is software and we are working hard, blah blah.

no secrets, no sensitive stuff. CEO of any software company can give the same, or better, speech.

6000 people gathered at suntec, 8000 questions submitted. i, for one, want to know things like, what is microsoft doing to stop spams, spyware? not their resposibility i know. why Windows server is always the target of hackers, compared to Unix server? when can IE become bug free? when can users feel secure using IE? is there any backdoor in Windows that sends personal information back to microsoft?

of course, i never expect Mr. Bill Gates answer these questions straight.

human beings are funny. i knew i wouldn’t learn much at the event in the first place. how can he reveal anything really valuable in such public event? but i rushed to microsoft web site to register once i got the news. it’s not that i wanted to hear some secrets, it’s the idea that i was going to see the richest man in the world that excited me.

Mr. Sim Wong Hoo gave a very interesting closing speech, the made in singapore story, in which he shared strategies to compete in IT market.