Ajax software     Free javascripts 
↑


Main Page

Performance.” You can find this information at

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/

Hosters

. There is also an abundance of specific information, including praises and gripes, at Web

-

HostingTalk —

http://www.webhostingtalk.com

.

Most of the time, users opt to use a web hosting provider’s DNS. This may be wise, because they may

need to alter DNS records in order to move you to another server with another IP if the server your

web site is located on fails. However, domain providers (Network Solutions, GoDaddy, and so on)

have more recently begun to offer free managed DNS services as well. If you use managed DNS,

the hosting provider will not be able to change your domain’s records to reflect the new IP, and

your site will be down as a result. For this reason, we do not recommend using managed DNS

unless your provider is aware of it, and knows to notify you, so that you can change the records

yourself to reflect the new IP.

Changing Hosting Providers

Should the need exist to change hosting providers, the process must be completed in the proper order.

Not doing so may result in a time window where your site is unreachable; and this is clearly not desirable,

from both a general

and

SEO perspective. The focus of this elaborate process is to prevent both users and

search engines from perceiving that the site is gone — or in the case of virtual hosting, possibly seeing the

wrong site.

Virtual hosting means that more than one web site is hosted on one IP. This is commonplace,

because the world would run out of IPs very quickly if every web site had its own IP. The problem

arises when you cancel service at your old web hosting provider and a spider still thinks your site

is located at the old IP. In this case, it may see the wrong site or get a 404 error; and as you suspect,

this is not desirable.

The proper approach involves having your site hosted at both hosting providers for a little while. When

your site is 100% functional at the new hosting provider, DNS records should then be updated. If you

are using a managed DNS service, simply change the “A” records to reflect the new web server ’s IP

address. This change should be reflected almost instantly, and you can cancel the web hosting service

at the old provider shortly thereafter. If you are using your old web hosting provider’s DNS, you

should change to the new hosting provider’s DNS. This change may take up to 48 hours to be fully

reflected throughout the Internet. Once 48 hours have passed, you can cancel your service at the old

hosting provider.

You do not have to follow these procedures exactly; the basic underlying concept is that there is a win-

dow of time where both users and spiders may still think your site is located at the old hosting provider’s

IP address. For this reason, you should only cancel after you are certain that that window of time has

elapsed.

One helpful hint to ease the process of moving your domain to a new web hosting provider is to edit

your

hosts

file to reflect the new IP on your local machine. This causes your operating system to use

the value provided in the file instead of using a DNS to get an IP address for the specified domains.

250

Chapter 13: Coping with Technical Issues

c13.qxd:c13 10:45 250

Ajax software     Free javascripts 
→