If you are looking to migrate from your current hosting provider to TPP Host, call us today or open a ticket and our migration specialists will help you make this process as seamless as possible. In the meantime here is some common questions.
How do I migrate my email accounts?
If you are moving your email hosting to our company, here are some tips to ensure a smooth transition to avoid headaches.
AUTOMATED VS. MANUAL MIGRATION:
In some cases the process of migrating your email accounts may occurr automatically with your website. In example if your current hosting provider has similar hosting setup as our servers do, transferring your existing email accounts and emails may be as simple as a few clicks by an administrator. CPANEL hosting is a great example, as transferring most sites over is as easy as an administrator having your current FTP logins, plugging them into one of our servers, and clicking to being the transfer process. However if your current host setup is not compatible, it will require a manual migration of your email accounts and emails.
For manual migration, here are some things you should know:
1. Email accounts cannot be transferred over like your website can. They must all be setup again on the new hosting account. This is due to incompatibility issues with whatever email software your old hosting provider is using.
2. The individual emails cannot be transferred over. However the good news is with some proper planning, you can easily ensure all of your emails are saved in advance to your local computer for future usage.
3. All existing email accounts should be setup in advance on your new hosting account before going live with the website. This ensures that once you go live, if someone sends you an email they do not receive a “bounce back: user not found” error.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Here are instructions for an easy transition.
1. Make a list of all email accounts you currently have @yoursite.com, including passwords if you have them available to make the transition more seamless. If you do not have the passwords, then you can always setup new passwords that your email users can easily update with their preferred email software or smart phones.
2. Ensure to download all of your emails for all existing accounts. If you are accessing emails via a program like MS Outlook, the default settings are to download all emails to your computer via a method called POP3 / SMTP. If you are using a method like IMAP which never downloads emails to your computer and keeps them on the server, you would need to switch it immediately to POP3, update it, then click SEND / RECEIVE so that your computer downloads a copy of all emails to your computer. If for any reason you are strictly downloading emails to your smart phone, in order to keep those emails it is highly recommended that you plug your email account into computer email software like MS Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail (last two are free programs available on more recent versions of Windows). Get with your hosting provider for exact settings for your emails.
CAUTION: Once your domain is repointed to new hosting / email provider, all of your previous emails WILL be lost so it is essential that you do the above.
3. Go into your new hosting account control panel per instructions sent to you, and setup same email accounts.
4. Passwords: Assuming the passwords are all the same, there is no additional steps you would have to take once migration is completed. If for any reason you need to setup new passwords:
a. Leave old passwords on your computer / smart phone until after move is complete.
b. Once move is complete, then change up to new password and modify any settings you would need to.
Once you are ready, you can then change up your domain name servers (or have us do it) and you will be live within average of 24 hours once your domain finishes propagating to new location.
If you still have questions, let us know and we will be glad to help out.
TESTING A NEW WEBSITE BEFORE GOING LIVE
The following gives details of migration testing of your website. This is relevant for clients whom are:
A. Moving from another hosting provider.
B. Launching a revised / new website.
C. Moving your website from an old server to a new server.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TESTING:
One of the most powerful tools available to somebody working on their site during a migration is their computer’s ‘hosts’ file. This file is especially useful when migrating a site between two servers, or any other time when DNS might not be working properly. Lets start with an example of the the information that would be found in a typical hosts file:
127.0.0.1 localhost
That is all you will generally see in a clean hosts file. Its layout is tab or space delimited. The first field in the line is the IP address that you would like the site to resolve to, and any additional fields after that should be domain names. For example, if I wanted to reroute yoursite.com to some other location I might put a line in my hosts file that looks something like this:
123.123.123.123 yoursite.com www.yoursite.com
As you can see, this will redirect both yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com to the IP address of 123.123.123.123. When moving a site to a new server, you can use this file to test out your sites to ensure that they work after the move, while still leaving your original site online. Simply point the desired IP address at the domain name in question and you computer will connect to the new IP whenever you type in the domain name.
This file is located in a few different places depending on your operating system. The file name is ‘hosts’ no matter what operating system you have.
STEP 1: LOCATE AND MODIFY YOUR HOST FILE:
Here are instructions on how to access your HOST file on various operating systems. Before you begin this step, ensure that you have a copy of the new IP address(es) in the format indicated above. If we are hosting your site, a copy will automatically be generated for you and you can request this from us.
Windows:
On Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 this file is located in:
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\
(Typically C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc)
With Vista/Windows 7 you will need to edit this file with administrative privileges. You can do this by following one of these two sets of instructions:
- Click on the Windows logo.
- Search for ‘notepad’
- Right click on the notepad launcher and select ‘Run As Administrator’
- Click File, then Open
- Browse to the folder mentioned above and select the hosts file
OR
- Click on the Windows logo.
- Click on Search.
- Search for the word “hosts” (Please be advised this search can take several minutes to complete)
- Double click on the hosts file and choose notepad as the program to open the file once prompted
MacOS:
On Mac OS X, your hosts file is located here:
/private/etc/hosts
You will need administrative privileges to edit this file.
Linux:
On Linux, you can find the hosts file here:
/etc/hosts
Depending on the distribution you may need administrative privileges to edit this file.
Please remember to revert the hosts file to its original state after the migration is complete.
STEP 2: CLEAR YOU DNS CACHE:
This next step helps tell your computer to not use a cached / stored version of the website if you recently visited it.
Windows:
On Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 you will perform this action via the COMMAND screen.
1. To access this screen click on START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES, then locate the COMMAND PROMPT item, right click on it and select “RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR”. Older versions of windows may not show this option, which is fine. You will see a prompt that looks similar to this:
C:\Users\YourUsername>
2. Type in the following then hit ENTER:
ipconfig /flushdns
You should get a confirmation message indicating it was successfully flushed.
3. Now to test that your computer is using the new IP address type in the following and hit ENTER:
ping www.yoursite.com
Pay attention to the IP address it gives you. This IP address should match the new IP address of your website as you modified in STEP 1.
MacOS:
Follow these steps to flush your DNS cache on MAC. These commands may vary based upon your specific MAC OS. If you find these commands don’t work, then google “mac flush dns cache” and locate your specific version of MacOS for instructions.
1. Launch Terminal and issue the following command and click ENTER:
dscacheutil -flushcache
2. Now to test that your computer is using the new IP address type in the following and hit ENTER:
ping www.yoursite.com
Pay attention to the IP address it gives you. This IP address should match the new IP address of your website as you modified in STEP 1.
STEP 3: TEST VIA BROWSER:
Next step is to test via your browser of choice.
1. If the browser you intend to use is currently open, ensure to clear all “temporary internet files”, then completely close it. Otherwise your computer may still try to use the old site. Ensure you close down the browser entirely, as just closing “tabs” will not be effective. After completing this, open a fresh browser window.
2. In the address bar type in your normal website address and click ENTER.
3. Test the site as you normally would.
STEP 4: WRAPUP:
Once you have successfully completed testing, follow these steps to revert back to the current LIVE site, referencing the steps above.
1. Close your browser window completely.
2. Edit your host file as described above, and either A) remove all entries you added or B) you can comment them out by adding a # sign before it, i.e.
#127.0.0.1 www.yoursite.com
That way you can easily reuse it in the future if needed.
3. Repeat STEP 2 above to clear you DNS CACHE.
4. Done!
