Step by step: files, database, email, testing before the DNS change and the change itself — so your website is never down, even for a minute.
Contents
Moving a website is nothing to worry about. The main rule is not to switch the domain over until the site works in its new home. Visitors then see the old site right up to the last moment, and the new one straight afterwards.
1. Set up your hosting
Once your hosting is set up, you will receive an email with your cPanel username and password and the server’s IP address. Keep the email — you will need it several times from here on.
2. Move the files
With your old host, download the website files as a single archive. On our side, open File Manager in cPanel, go to the public_html folder, upload the archive and extract it (right-click → Extract). If the archive is large, it is easier to upload it with an FTP program — see Uploading files over FTP and SFTP for how to do this.
3. Move the database
If your website uses a database (WordPress, Joomla, an online shop — almost always yes):
- on the old host, export the database to a file — in phpMyAdmin, this is the Export tab;
- on our side, create a database and a user — cPanel → MySQL® Databases;
- upload the file into the new database — phpMyAdmin → Import.
For details, see MySQL databases in cPanel. If, after the move, you see question marks or garbled characters instead of accented or non-Latin letters, take a look at Question marks and garbled characters instead of letters.
4. Update the website settings
The website needs to know about the new database. Find its settings file and enter the database name, username and password you have just created. In WordPress this is wp-config.php, and the database host is localhost. Bear in mind that in cPanel, database and user names begin with the account username — for example, login_site.
Choose the same PHP version that you had with your old host: The PHP version for your website.
5. Email
If your domain has email, create mailboxes on our side with the same addresses — Email in cPanel. The easiest way to move old messages is with an email program: connect both the old and the new mailbox (over IMAP) and drag the folders from one to the other.
6. Test the website before switching over
You can look at the website on the new server while the rest of the world still sees the old one. To do this, add a line to the hosts file on your own computer:
203.0.113.10 example.co.uk www.example.co.ukReplace 203.0.113.10 with the server’s IP address from the email. The file is here: on Windows, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (open Notepad as an administrator); on macOS and Linux, /etc/hosts. Your browser now opens the website from our server. The browser may complain about the certificate — that is normal; the real certificate is issued automatically after the domain is switched over.
Once you have checked everything, remove the line from the hosts file.
7. Switch the domain over
Set our DNS servers for the domain — which ones, and where to set them, is explained in Which DNS servers to set at your registrar. The change doesn’t reach everyone at once: it usually takes a few hours, sometimes a day or two. So don’t switch off your old host for another couple of days — there are more details in Moving DNS without downtime.
Once the domain is working with us, a free SSL certificate is issued automatically — there is nothing for you to do.
Didn’t find the answer? Ask our support team — we’ll help.