cPanelSupport.net

Someone recently said “If I don’t like my new hosting company, I’ll just move the site. Right??”

It might be easy, but then again it might not. The complexity depends on the nature of your site. If you have some static HTML files and images. Easy. If you have a database-driven site such as a blog or forum (or lots of other things), it gets more complex.

I’ve had good experience moving sites from a server running cPanel & WebHost Manager (WHM) to another cPanel / WHM server. WHM has a transfer function. It did a great job creating and populating my database and tables, something I was especially concerned about. Overall, it would have been a time-consuming effort to move the site if the new server did not have cPanel and WHM.

Sometimes backup functions on servers will work (backup the old server, restore to the new server). But like all backup/restores, it does not always work as desired.

There are other issues beyond transferring files and the database that are beyond the scope of this write-up (for example, nameserver changes need to propagate, whether the versions of software on the new server are compatible with your apps, getting the latest and greatest database updates on the new server during propagation, et al.)

Overall, yes you can change hosts or servers. I’ve done it several times. It’s just not something to be casual about when signing up with a company. You want to do your homework upfront and not shrug it off and say “oh, well, if I don’t like my new hosting company I can change in a few months.” Bringing this topic back to the point of this blog: Web Host Manager has a transfer tool that worked great for me when I had numerous sites to move.