[support] Need To Know How To Move Drupal To Another Hosting Company

[Michael Steinmann]

Bèr Kessels wrote:
> Op donderdag 22 december 2005 00:26, schreef Larry Garfield:
> 
>>Bear in mind that if you're also mving the domain name to a new host,
>>there will be a delay in getting the domain to point to the new server.
>>The details there vary depending on your web hosts.

to avoid the delay of other DNS servers picking up the change you can
set the TTL value of the DNS entry to zero a day or so (depending on the
entry's current value) before switching over to the new IP. That way,
downstream DNS servers will not cache the entry during the phase of the
switch and will always request the IP from the primary DNS server.

Don't forget to set the TTL to a sane value again after the move.

> Here is a way to avoid downtime:
> * set up the site (with the backups / sql files etc) on the new  host
> * add a example.com/settings.php to that new hosts intallation
> * add a staging.example.com/settings.php to that new hosts intallation
> * Lock down comments and submissions. For all content added, from now on, to 
> the ld site, will be lost. 
> * Get staging.example.com dns to pint to that new host [1]
> * Test staging.example.com (to find out if everythnih on that new host runs as 
> wished.
> * You might optionally do a new database copy here, and only then lock the 
> submission on the old site.
> * Get the DNS for example.com to point to the new server
> * Wait untill the world hasz the new detals and is working on the (unlocked, 
> you never locked that one down) new site/server
> * Remove the old stuff from the old site. A good thing to do is to request a 
> DVD by mail from the data your account.
> 
> [1] Alternaatively, instead of staging.example.com you can use the IP of the 
> new host just add a 
> sites/123.451.234/settings.php (the ip) 

--
mike