Moving Your Website and Email to EDZNET Print

This checklist takes you through moving an existing website and email from another host to EDZNET without losing mail or leaving visitors on a broken site. Work through it in order: the trick is to have everything working on our server before you point your domain at it.

1. Set up your EDZNET account

1. Order a hosting plan for your domain. Your welcome email contains your cPanel login and the details you'll need later.
2. Leave your old hosting running until the move is finished.

2. Copy your website

1. If your old host also uses cPanel, a full account backup from there can often be restored onto our server. Open a ticket before you start and we'll advise on the best way to move your account.
2. Otherwise, copy the files and database yourself. Download your site's files from the old host and upload them to public_html using FileZilla or the cPanel File Manager.
3. Export the database from the old host, create a new database and user in cPanel, then import it with phpMyAdmin.
4. Update your site's configuration file (for WordPress, wp-config.php) with the new database name, user and password. The database host is normally localhost.

3. Recreate your mailboxes

Create each email address in cPanel under Email › Email Accounts with the same name as before. See how to create an email account. Recreate any forwarders and autoresponders too.

4. Test before you switch

You can preview the site on our server before changing DNS by pointing just your own computer at it with your hosts file:

1. Find your hosting server's IP address in your welcome email (or ask support).
2. Open the hosts file as an administrator: on Windows it's C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts; on macOS and Linux it's /etc/hosts.
3. Add a line with the IP address followed by your domain names, for example IP-ADDRESS example.co.uk www.example.co.uk, and save.
4. Browse the site and check pages, forms and logins. Remove the line when you've finished testing.

5. Lower the TTL

A day or two before the switch, lower the TTL on your domain's records at your current DNS provider (for example to 300 seconds), so caches pick up the change faster. See what DNS TTL is.

6. Switch your nameservers

Change your domain's nameservers to ours at your registrar. See how to point your domain to EDZNET hosting. Allow up to 24 to 48 hours for the change to reach everyone.

7. Move your old email

Once mail is arriving at EDZNET, copy messages across from the old server:

1. Add both the old and new mailboxes to an email app such as Thunderbird or Outlook, using IMAP for both. For the old account, use your old host's server details (you may need its server hostname or IP address, as your domain now points to us).
2. Drag the folders (Inbox, Sent and so on) from the old account to the new one, and wait for them to upload.
3. Repeat for each mailbox, then remove the old account from the app.

Only cancel your old hosting once the website loads from EDZNET everywhere and all your email has been copied.