Migration to another host

A day or two before you move host, add a note to the top of every page of the old site to say you are shortly moving to new hosting and that the store will be closed for a very short time on the day. Change the DNS TTL setting down to 30 minutes or less as well.

You'll first need to set up the site scripting on the new server, and then just before you copy the database over from old to new site, you will need to stop anyone from signing up, logging in, or buying anything from the old site by taking it 'down for maintenance'.

As soon as that's in place, take a copy of the database and get it installed on the new site. Verify it is all working (reset cache and session data etc) and then change the DNS settings to point to the new site. Within hours, you'll see some visitors appearing on the new server.

Leave the old site online, but inactive, for at least a week to ensure that no-one is arriving there any more. Finally take the old site down and keep copies of the server logs and any other data you need.

Most people will see the site working but showing a note to say it will be 'offline for a while', followed by the store being temporarily 'down for maintenance', followed by the store simply working again (and without the note) when their local DNS has been updated to point to the new server.

It actually doesn't sound too bad, I'm thinking if I take Filezilla and do a 'file for file' 'directory for directory' copy to my hard drive and then load it to the new site the directory structure will remain intact. Adding the ssl seems fairly straightforward. Wish me luck! lol

And thanks for the input. :yes: