Moving your hosting can seem daunting, however there are some steps that you can take to improve the process, and ensure that the transition to Brixly is as smooth as possible!
This guide gives some initial tips and pointers for things to check and do before your move - these things will help ensure things go smoothly and you have minimal downtime during your migration.
Even if you're keen to get going, please, take a few moments just to read through these tips, before jumping back to the
Migrationssection to find the best guide for your move - from a cPanel host, from a non-cPanel host - whether you are moving your domains to Brixly or leaving them somewhere else - we've got you covered.
Tip 1 - Talk to us
We're happy to chat online or arrange a call with you prior to your migration. We understand there's a lot to consider - we do this stuff every day - and we can guide you through the process and let you know what you need to do in a step-by-step way.
Tip 2 - Plan your migration
Think about when you'd like to actually complete your migration, during the day, in the evening, at the weekend - you'll need to be around and have time to test and complete any post-migration tweaks to get your site live in it's new home.
Decide if and when you'll put your site into maintenance mode (and know how to do that). Understand how to take backups and how to get them on to your Brixly server if you're completing the migration yourself.
Tip 3 - reduce your DNS Time To Live (TTL)
When you move your site or hosting to Brixly, you will be pointing your site to your new servers IP address - its identity number on the internet will change from one of your current host's numbers to one of Brixly's. DNS (Domain Name System) maps your site's name (e.g. www.yoursite.co.uk) to this identity number (e.g. 101.101.101.101). When visitors browse to your site DNS nameservers are queried in the background to find the correct IP address to send them to. These queries are cached to reduce load. The TTL defines how long this data is cached. In order for your move to go smoothly and for people to be able to connect to your site again quickly after the move, we recommend reducing the TTL for your DNS nameserver records and your sites A record a few days before you actually perform your migration.
Typically DNS records are set for 86400 seconds, or 24 hours, but can be even longer. We recommend setting this to 300 seconds (5 minutes) up to a week before you move - to allow any servers who have cached data to timeout and pull the new short TTL version.
This means when you update your nameservers or update your sites A (address) record, if you are managing your domains elsewhere, the change will be picked up quickly by DNS servers around the world, reducing the amount of time taken for the DNS changes to 'propagate'.
Tip 4 - Don't cancel your existing hosting
Always allow some overlap time - to get your site up and running on Brixly and for testing - just in case something gets missed or needs retrieving from your current host.
Tip 5 - Notify your clients
Its always advisable to discuss any migrations with your clients, to prepare for any disruption to service. Whilst we make the migration process as painless as possible, there is still always the possibility of some disruption. Although rare, its still worthy of a heads up!
Tip 6 - Bulk move!
If you are using a reseller hosting provider elsewhere and are looking to migrate over to Brixly, you have a number of tools that allow you to migrate at your own leisure (for example, our WordPress migration process through Softaculous). However, if you are migrating from a cPanel / WHM provider, you are able to 'bulk migrate' your accounts in one go!
This process is significantly easier, as it allows you to migrate all accounts, then update the DNS at the same time. This is ideal, if you are using custom nameservers with your existing hosting provider, as you can re-route your nameservers over to our cluster, in place of your existing nameservers.
If this concept is all a little too much, refer to Tip 1 and give us a shout! We would be happy to arrange a call to discuss the migration of your reseller accounts, or to clarify the process.
