Moving website to Zen AND a new host

Hi All,

I need some help! I am moving my website from a terrible hosting provider to a new host. The original host decided that they needed to move their customers to a new server and in the process broke my original site. Besides breaking my site, their service is horrible and my site is either slow or down more than it is functioning properly.

To fix these problems, I decided to move to a new host and build a new site using zencart. My original site was built with oscommerce. My original site is at https://www.blowininthewind.com and my new site is at https://www.holidaygardenflag.com. I don't know how to build a site without having it live, so both are currently live.

My intention is to move the url https://www.blowininthewind.com over to the new host once I'm done building the new site (it's not done yet).

I have been able to transfer my products and am confident that I will also be able to transfer my customers when I'm ready. What I need to know is when I move the https://www.blowininthewind.com url to the new zencart site (currently at https://www.holidaygardenflag.com), what do I need to do/ know to make this change. I know enough about this stuff to be dangerous and I'm by no means a professional. I'm concerned about my current (not so good, but at least they're there) web positions and how I'll be found.

I have almost 2000 customers and I don't want them to not be able to find me again if I make this change.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.....I'm not a web guru, so please help me in layman terms if you can...

Billie

What you need to do is make the https://www.blowininthewind.com domain a "parked" domain which points to https://www.holidaygardenflag.com. You should be able to do that through your CPanel (or whatever webmaster panel your host provides). Your hosting service can probably advise you better.

If you want to keep the https://www.blowininthewind.com separate and have it point to the same Zen Cart database, you can do that as well, but that'll require setting it up as a subdomain and installing Zen Cart for it.

Mary is quite correct. Another option would be to use the BETA Multi-Site module so you can set up two entirely different looking templates with the same data and control panel.

It depends on what the goal is. If you want customers used to visiting olddomain.com to see olddomain.com as the website instead of newdomain.com, then set up olddomain.com as a separate Zen Cart but point it to the same database (assuming both sites are selling the same items). Multisite sounds like an equally good possibility.

My original thought was to just move the blowininthewind.com url over to the new host and then move the new zencart site to the blowininthewind.com url again.

It wasn't my intention to leave the oscommerce site up....once I'm done with the zencart one, the zencart one will be the only one I have for this product line. My thought was to just delete the oscommerce one.

Are you keeping https://www.holidaygardenflag.com?

The osC version isn't figuring into this at all. I didn't think you were intending to leave it up. We're talking solely about the domain names.

Yes, I'll be keeping it....I thought I would just point it to the blowininthewind.com once everything was up and running.

So I don't need to do any kind of 301 redirects? I'm not even sure what they are to be honest, but it seems like people do them when stuff gets moved around....

No, you don't need redirects. Just add it to your hosting as a parked domain pointing to https://www.holidaygardenflag.com.

The url for Fan Odyssey site in my sig is http://www.fanodyssey.org but http://www.fanodyssey.com and http://www.fanodyssey.net will also take you there because they point to the .org.

I'm assuming this won't cause any problems for my customers to find us unless they bookmarked something other than the main URL right?

Is there anything else I need to be aware of with a move like this?

I can't think of anything.

Depending on your webmaster panel, you may be able to check the error log. If you see that people are hitting an old link, you can always create a redirect for it. That function may also be available through the webmaster panel.

and in case I need to do that, where do I create a redirect?

The hosting service I use offers CPanel as the webmaster panel. There's an option called "manage redirects" under Domains (where is also where I have options to manage add-on and parked domains). It makes it fairly simple to do since it asks for the old URL, what you'd like it redirected to and if the redirect is temporary or permanent.

duh....sorry about that, you said it's in the webmaster control panel.

Thanks for all of your information! I'm not so worried that I'm going to destroy my business with all of these changes anymore!

You sound like you've got it pretty much under control. :thumbsup: Good luck with the new hosting and your move to Zen Cart.