Moving a website from one server to another can be tricky, especially if your client demands ‘no downtime’.
There is no right and wrong way but I’m going to outline a few steps that might help if you ever find yourself in this situation.
- If you have numerous websites on your server, make sure you inform your clients… and if they are reselling tell them to tell their clients as well.
- Set aside a period of 3-4 days. This is necessary for DNS propogation which normally takes between 48 - 72 hours to complete.
- When the agreed time occurs, put up ’stop pages’ that prevent people entering the website and hence stops changes to the database (this can be done using a mod_rewrite)
- Backup the database and the files.
- Copy the files to the new server and reload the database using PHPMyAdmin (import function)
- Change the DNS records to change to your new server
- Take away the stop pages after 72 hours
- Backup again and your new website should start appearing.