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This was a situation we had with a client recently.  They’ve been wanting to move their website from their current web host to a new one.  We spent some time advising them on which hosting provider and package would suit their needs.

Once we found a suitable one we offered them the choice of setting up the webhost for them or they could set it up themselves if they felt confident.  Needless to say they did it themselves and a few days later we have an e-mail informing us of the change of hosting and the details required to access the new server.

We left it a couple of days to allow the change to take effect and then set up our access to the clients web space.  “Oops this link appears to be broken” said Google.  So we waited another day and then tried it again, same thing happened and then again for the next couple of days.  At this point warning signals are going off in my head, “they haven’t changed the content over”.  I ring the client and explain the situation to which they reply, “we were told it would automatically show up once the change had occured”.

First Lesson: If you change your host from one company to another, your just changing the place your website name (domain name) looks at when it’s trying to load your website into the browser.  In simple terms, your website address (www.mydomain.co.uk) will be pointed to a server, the server then links your domain name to your website files on the server.  If there aren’t any files there, the domain won’t have anything to point to.

So I checked with the new web host to see if there was any truth to what the client was saying and sure enough, there wasn’t.  The reality was, they had paid for space on the new web host’s server and told the old web host to point their domain to this new server, only there was no content on the new server.  Why? Because they hadn’t loaded any!  To top it off, the old web host had deleted all the files.  To doubly top it off the client had failed to renew their website domain name which was now suspended and at risk of being released back into the wild!

Fortunately, being of sound body and mind I always make back ups of a clients site whenever I do any work on it.

Second Lesson: Always take an updated backup anytime you make any alterations to your website.  Never never ever rely on the security of your webhost to protect your website.  Make a backup on a re-writable disk and then every so often start another disk so that if one disk ever fails, you have another.  It may not be as recent a backup but it’s better than none at all.

So once I’d discovered quite what the state of the situation was, I got the client’s login details, went into their account, renewed the domain name which meant that there was now a holding page from the new host when you typed in the website URL (domain name).  With a live domain, I was now able to access the control panel for the new hosting and begin uploading the backup onto the server.  7 hours later (it’s a big site!), the website is uploaded, live and working perfectly again.  A bit of a downside is that in the time it took to understand the problem (missing website), work out the solution and then get the site up and running again, Google had been and indexed the site.  Now, if the site is not even there, Google will think it’s a non-existent site and drop it down the rankings.  Basically because the links on the site don’t point anywhere.

Third Lesson:  Never have broken links on your pages, Google doesn’t like it and will penalise you if you have “broken links” (links that don’t point to something that Google can find).  Also, if you do have to take your site down for a short time, plan to do it the day after you know that Google has just visited.  If you have a small or medium sized business chances are Google won’t index it for another couple of weeks.

Now I have to go and repair some of the search engine optimisation (seo) work I’d done before to rescue some of the search places back from the competition.

Fourth Lesson:  If your website is an important contributor to your income, check that you’ve got all your Is dotted and your Ts crossed before you make such and important change.  Plan for all the key eventualities, seek expert advice on what to consider in such changes.

Summary

1. Domain names (website name) are bought through a registrar.  They are separate to a web host and web site files, although many we hosts also offer a service for you to buy domain names.
2. Web hosting is just space on a server, it still needs to be populated with website files in order for anything to appear in a browser.
3. When changing web hosts, it’s essential to ensure you upload your website from the old host to the new one, otherwise when your domain name begins to point to your new host there won’t be any files on the server to find.
4. Always make a regular back up of your website.  Not just because you might need to change hosts, but also because web servers are not perfect and there are chances (slim as they are) that your site could be corrupted or deleted accidently.
5. Check each and every link that’s meant to point to somewhere on your site or external to your site.  It’ll potentially damage your rankings if Google can’t find the file on the other end of a link.
6. Finally, plan, speak to people, try to identify all the different aspects and impacts that will come from making a change to your website, before you do it.

If in doubt, call us and we’ll try and help guide you through.