Hosting Transfer

BCA have made the decision to move away from FastHosts to Memset for our Internet Hosting Services. There are several reasons for the move:

• Service Fasthosts had a good reputation when we signed up with them, but the level of service we have experienced on occasions has been very poor.
• Control We have very little control over the server and rely on Fasthosts to make the changes we request. Frequently they wouldn't, spuriously claiming “security reasons” and thereby prevent perfectly good software from being run. A Dedicated Server would give us total control but comes at an unaffordable price. The solution we have gone for is a Virtual Private Server (VPS) which gives us complete control at a more sensible price.
• Features Memset's pricing structure allows us to include many features in the basic package that were chargeable extras before. Spam filtering, a database, statistics, password protected areas and more are now included in the basic package. See Pricing.

Domain Registration will remain with Fasthosts, it is the email and web hosting that is moving. We have had no problems with Fasthosts as a registrar. It is amongst the cheapest and is considerably cheaper than Memset.

NOTE

• We no longer offer unlimited space. This is the flip-side to offering more features in the basic package. See Pricing
• The new server is Linux only, there is no option for a Windows server.

The steps are:

1. Take a backup of the existing website.
2. Browse to the control panel (cPanel) of the new server.
   1. Create the email accounts and forwarders as they are on the old server.
   2. Create a database if you had one previously.
      1. Backup the database from the old server and restore to the new server.
3. Connect to the new server with FTP
   1. Copy all of the web files from the old server to the new server.
4. Browse to the website on the new server and check it thoroughly.
   1. The new server is case-sensitive. Are all the directories, file names and URLs the proper case?
   2. The new server observes permissions. Are the directory and file permissions correct?
   3. Can the database be accessed? Make sure you are accessing the new database and not the old.
   4. Check software generated emails are still sent.
5. Once all the checks are done the name servers (DNS) will be updated to make the new website live.
   1. Updates to the old site should be prevented. So Forums and similar should be disabled.
   2. It can take up to 72 hours for the DNS changes to propagate around the world. In that time a user might arrive at either the new or the old site.
6. After 72 hours check the new site again. If all is OK the old site will be removed from Fasthosts.
   1. This will irrevocably delete all the files on the old site.

NOTE
We will be able to do many of these steps for you. Basically unless you request otherwise, we will do all the steps except step 4, i.e you need to check that it all works.