It is not something new that there are many people around us who raise the issue of switching to another web host or IP address being devoid of any sort of hiccups in Google. In this article, the experience of moving mattcutts.com from one IP to another IP just with the aid of altering the host is elucidated. It’s easier to accomplish having a static website than a dynamic website. The idea doesn’t vary but it is better if you can spend a day while your website can swing between 2 IP addresses. Some steps are there.
Step 1: Sign up with a good web host provider
You can do some research work or follow some references to find a good web host for yourself. I preferred by present web host (csoft.net), which I selected after research, and I also found that the readership of the site was growing beyond my expectation. A non-SEO friend of mine used pair.com. Let me refer to the example using IP addresses. If we move from csoft.com to pair.com, the IP would change from 63.x.x.x to 65.x.x.x. DNS is a system used for mapping websites to the IP address which a machine uses, like, say, 61.115.6.132.
Step 2: Create a backup of your website on the new web host
Having a static website is good as that would mean that just copying the whole file to the new web host – that is all. Having a blog makes it harder as it usually involves MySQL for storage of posts. Some e-commerce websites are more difficult for this reason as the database is always synced. In this case, you may have to set up a replica of the database between the old and new locations during the switch.
Well, here, an instance is given of a WordPress blog that makes use of MySQL database and can come up with a bit of problem for some hours. Just imagine that you have made use of FTP in order to copy the static files from one web host to other. A new MySQL database has to be created now. The same username and database name might work but if it doesn’t, you are in need of putting the WordPress wp-config.php on the new location with a view to update the username, database name, and other relevant things.
You now have a new SQL database so that you can get away with the old one, copy it to the new one, and then load the database there.
Keep in mind that you not only have a username and a password for both the web hosts, but different usernames and passwords for the database at every single location. You may also have the MySQL database stored on a unique location, which is the reason I showed the host option while database restoration. Also, if the new host has a unique option for the database, you will be required to edit the wp-config.php file, else WordPress will be unable to access the database on your new host.
At two separate locations, you do have the same copies of your website. The issue of maintaining both the databases synchronized is only applicable to the vast and e-commerce based site. Whereas, someone altering your database at the transition period or a comment getting posted is nothing serious provided your blog is endowed with update of some comments regularly.
Step 3: Changing the DNS to point to the new web host
This is the main thing to achieve. Let me give some fair idea on DNS first. Whenever Googlebot or anybody attempts to reach your site, they look your IP address. They do their best make sure of the authenticity by rechecking the IP address after about 500 fetches, or even check whether certain number of hours have elapsed. Normally, people using DNS-enabled browsers are affected by TTL [a setting - Time to Live], which is measured in seconds and says “The IP address you fetched will be safe for ‘x’ seconds; you can cache this IP address and not bother to look it up again for that many seconds.” Obviously, since if you tracked the IP address for all the content on each webpage of your site, the browser would move very slowly indeed.
For DNS, TTL assumes a significant role. A couple of websites like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. have pretty short DNS TTL setting of about 300-900 seconds. This is because if you have many data centers, you would like to take one of them down to enable the data center mechanics to provide good data to the machines. If you have a short TTL, you would be able to pull the IP address of a data center out of the rotation in merely a couple of minutes.
This also explains the days of “Google Dance” that went by. It would last for a week or so, and based on the data center which the user hit, they would see the old as well as the new results. The main reason was that every data center was brought down and brought back, after loading it with new data. It required many days to switch the data to all the centers. During the period, webmasters checked out www2.google.com or www3.google.com since they led them to the latest data centers. Nowadays, the production system is properly equipped for switching these things around in lesser time.
Step 4: Wait while the DNS change is propagated through the internet
This is a TTL function and is based on whether you are switching to those name servers which are present in the DNS currently. DNS is hierarchical, and thus it will take some time for the DNS caches to be flushes as the TTL is exceeded. The switch, which takes place at the root of DNS, would be faster only if you use a smart registrar and a known set of the new name servers. The ‘dig+trace domain’ can be used in UNIX and Linux for confirming that the new name server is present on the root server.
Step 5: You are almost done with your task when you are sure that Googlebot is fetching from the new web host and the IP address. In such a case, the old website can be shut down.
You can check your IP address by pinging your domain. By doing this, you can see your progress. The old visitors, from their own DNS cache, may be using the old IP address, but be sure that the new visitors get the new one. It is considered good to allow a couple of days as a few people might have a long TTL set, even though most of them are for about a day or even less. So after a day has elapsed, it would actually be safe to de-activate hosting on the old location. You can check your logs for foolproof confirmation on this. If your log mentions no visitor visiting from the old location, then you are fully done with it!
About the author: Gregory Trune is a professional blogger in the web hosting industry. Visit WebHostingMadness.com to read his reviews on the top 10 hosting companies this year.