Posts Tagged ‘backups’

How to move smoothly from an Old Web Host to New Hosting

Saturday, April 9th, 2011 by PalladiumHosting

It is the common tendency of some people to get dissatisfied with their current web host. Some people  just can’t seem to get enough from their current web host. For such reasons, they find that moving to a new host is the most practical thing to do. There are several reasons why people may consider changing hosts. Depending upon the complexity of your website, the process can be simple enough for an amateur to do or it can be difficult or time consuming enough that you need to bring in professional help. One of the most common reasons through is dissatisfaction with their current provider’s support features.

Another important reason is a better price elsewhere where significant savings cannot be easily passed up. There can be a great number of other reasons why you would want to move from one host to another, but regardless of the reason, you should carefully consider some important factors before doing so. You need to keep in mind that your move should be smooth with little if any interruption in service. If anything goes badly, your site will be affected significantly and you surely would not want this to happen.

The first and most important step in concern to moving from old to new web host is to locate a web host and open your new account. This new hosting provider should be able to accommodate your technical needs, and you should be absolutely sure that you want to move before you begin the process. Next, to get back up of all the files on your original host is very important. Also, keep the smart directory structure in well maintained form. Now you need to copy over the database. It involves dumping the database information, uploading it and then feeding the dumped file into the new database. Now, you have everything unpacked, you need to test the site to make sure that everything is working. Once everything is moved and verified as working, you can close the old account without fear of losing data.

If your old host and new host use Cpanel they can do the entire transfer for you, including databases very quickly saving you huge amounts of work.

In nutshell, if you are planning to move from your current host to a new one, make sure that you keep these things in mind to help your move be a smooth one.

Why is it important to backup?

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 by PalladiumHosting

You hear about hosts offering backup services, and you hear people say that it’s important to back your site up often. But why? Even when you have a managed server, it’s always a good idea to run backups of your own, and save them on your own computer. While no host, including us, wants something bad to happen, computers are computers, and by their very nature, anything can happen.

If you back your data up often, and if something happens, you will be less likely to lose critical data, such as blog posts, forum posts, and so forth. If you back these things up, and your server should crash for whatever reason, the worst that will happen is that you will have to re-install your applications and databases. If you don’t back things up, however, you’ll need to start from scratch, and that would be a disaster for a business site.

There are numerous scripts available that will automatically back your databases up and e-mail them to you. At that point, you can simply save them in a specific area on your computer. The same goes for other data. If nothing else, you can manually backup your images, .htaccess files, and other critical data. This way, if the worst happens, you can be back up and running with minimal delay.

It’s important to remember that there’s no such thing as being too cautious. Back up every day at least. It’s better to be overprepared than it is to be underprepared, especially when it comes to critical data such as databases, and especially when those databases contain vital customer information.

Palladium Hosting provides all of its clients with access to backup functionality within their cPanel control panels allowing you to backup your databases and home directories directly to your desktop with a few simple clicks.