Migrating From Another Hosting Service

[mtiwebmaster]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this topic, but here goes. I just signed up with TCH. I am the webmaster for a community theater group, and we currently have a website on a different hosting service that we are looking to migrate to TCH. It provides information on our group, upcoming productions, and allows patrons to purchase tickets, etc.

 

My problem is that I need to get everything uploaded to the TCH host and test it out before changing the DNS entries for our domain so that they point to the TCH servers. I have uploaded some of our pages to the TCH server using the "<IP address>/<username>/". I can access the pages there, but the problem is that all of the internal links are wrong. If I have a link that starts with a "/", the server tries to find it in the document root, which appears to be /usr/local/apache/htdocs. Of course, the file doesn't exist there, it's in /home/<username>/public_html. I can't change all my links to relative links (not starting with "/") because many of them are in php include files which are included into files that are at various places in the site's directory hierarchy. I'm told the document root will change to /home/<username>/public_html when I switch th DNS entries and am accessing TCH's server through my domain name.

 

So I have a chicken and egg problem. I can't test out my site until I switch my DNS entries to point to TCH, but I don't want to switch the DNS entries until I have tested the site.

 

Any suggestions? I can't believe I'm the first one to come across this problem!

 

Erick Pew

Music Theatre of Idaho webmaster

[TCH-Bruce]

Until the domain switches some things won't work right.

[abinidi]

I guess it depends on how bad you want to test everything.

 

Are you transferring the exact same site that you had on your old host? If so, chances are pretty good it will just keep working like it did.

 

Are you making new changes to your site at the new host? That may not have been the easiest choice. Its kind of like upgrading your hardward. If you only upgrade one piece at a time, if something goes wrong, you know where the problem is...

 

If you REALLY want to test it before it goes live, you might consider registering a test domain, and setting up a hosting account for a month. For as little as $9 bucks for domain registration and $4 for one months' hosting, you could test your site on a working domain. When all is working correctly, you could have the help desk switch your content to the domain you will be using, and let that one go live.

 

I don't know. It is how I would probably do it, if testing were extremely important before site launch.

 

Best wishes. Welcome to the forums and to the TCH family.

[Deverill]

If you did want to go the route Paul mentions with a test account, the HelpDesk techs could probably help you move the entire, tested, site over to the proper account/domain when you are ready. That way you don't have to worry about upload failures breaking your final site.

[TCH-Bruce]

I didn't mention the option of another domain name. Sounds like the content is already on the TCH servers and just not working as it should because you are accessing it with the IP number.

 

You can purchase another domain name and park it over the existing domain name (by opening a help desk ticket) you bought the hosting for. Then just access the site with the new name until you switch the DNS on your old host's site.

 

When you are satisfied everything is working switch the DNS for your main domain name.

[Deverill]

Hey, great idea about the parking, Bruce - didn't think about it.