They have web accounts in different sizes and dedicated servers. Both managed and unmanaged. Great support!

1. Backup Backup Backup!

Backup your files before you change web hosts. Take your whole web root but don't forget files that you might have saved outside the root.
Sometimes web stats are saved outside the root, if you want to save those.
Backup your database(s). It might be easy to miss, but it is so extremely important!! After all, the database is often your whole site :-)

If you have cPanel at your host, you can use their backup function which is superb!!
When you move to your new host (if they also use cPanel), you just give them the backup file and they can import that into your account.

2. Upload (or import with cPanel) your files to the new server.

Here are lots of things that might need fixing and tweeking.
First of all, ask your web host for the temp url to your site, so you can check it before your change over the domain name to the new web server.

If often look like something like this: http://123.123.123.123/~yourAccount/

 

3. Check everything

Here are some things that might give your problem to fix:
- perl, cgi paths. Check with the host what paths you should use. (This is Only for those using any of those techniques, not for PHP for example)
Change in all necesary files to the new url.
- Sometimes pre made scripts needs some configurating. You don't have to reinstall the scripts, but you might need to change the file path in some configuration file.
Best way to know if you need this is to try to use the site, if everything looks good you don't have to worry :-)
- Maybee you need to change file permissions on some files or directories. This is also a thing that you often see when you surf the site. If you don't see any problems, you probably don't have to think about this.

One thing that you should know that might look wrong even if it will work when you change name servers.
If your scripts link to other scripts like this: "/index.php" or "/class/myClass.php" you will see problems. (note the first slash)
This says that the webserver should look for the file relative to the root. But because your site is surfed from a subdirectory now (temporarely) the web server can't find the correct file.
But this will work when you change your information later.

Now it's almost time to change, so your domain name points to the new server.

But first, you should inform your visitors that you are changing servers.
There might be some problems, then it's important to have informed them before they find the problems.

If it's important that your visitors always can reach you by email you could set up a gmail or yahoo mail temporarely.

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